A client wants a price per head. The easy answer is whatever you charged last time. The right one starts with what this menu costs, for this head count, at the prices you are paying now.

Start with four numbers

You need:

  1. The guest count.
  2. The selling price per guest you are considering.
  3. The total theoretical food cost for the event.
  4. The food-cost target you use to judge the quote.

Theoretical food cost means the expected ingredient cost of the planned menu. It is not the same as the invoice total, and it does not automatically include labor, rentals, packaging, delivery, overhead, or food prepared above the guaranteed count.

Work the event in this order

Use these three calculations:

Revenue = guests × selling price per guest
Food cost per guest = total food cost ÷ guests
Food-cost percentage = total food cost ÷ revenue × 100

Consider the illustrative 180-guest event shown in the CostCook product tour:

180 guests × $68.00 = $12,240.00 revenue
$4,847.96 ÷ 180 ≈ $26.93 food cost per guest
$4,847.96 ÷ $12,240.00 ≈ 39.6% food cost

$68 sounds like a nice round number. The food says otherwise: 39.6 cents of every dollar this event brings in is already spoken for by ingredients.

CostCook's food-cost target panel flags 39.6% food cost as Critical, 9.6 percentage points over target. It says packaging, rentals, staff, and food cooked over the guarantee are outside this food-only number.
Captured order target: the 39.6% food-cost warning names what the figure leaves out.

Compare it with the target

If your food-cost target is 30%, reverse the percentage calculation to find the price that would meet it:

Required revenue = total food cost ÷ target percentage
Required price per guest = food cost per guest ÷ target percentage
$26.9331 ÷ 0.30 ≈ $89.78 per guest

That doesn’t make $89.78 the price your market will pay. It’s what this menu and that target add up to. From there it’s your call: raise the price, change the menu, live with a different target, or pass on the job.

Check the assumptions before you quote

  • Are any ingredients missing a current price?
  • Are yields based on the product you actually buy?
  • Are sub-recipes included once, not twice?
  • Does the recipe cover the quantity you cook above the guarantee?
  • Are packaging, rentals, labor, delivery, and overhead handled somewhere outside the food number?
  • Will the quoted price be preserved if supplier prices change later?

A round price can still be a crooked quote. Food cost per guest isn’t there to make the number look better. It’s there so the food, your target and the client’s price are all in front of you when you decide.

What to carry into the next quote

Keep the menu, the count, the ingredient cost, the target and the price together. When one of them moves, run the same three numbers again before you say yes.