The hidden costs in a catering quote

We found every one of these in our own numbers. When we rebuilt a pizza and pasta station we catered for 50 guests on June 27, 2026, the event looked like it kept $1,843, or 66% of the subtotal. That figure was too high, and a few costs we did know about never reached the client.

1. Dishes with no recipe cost

Our invoice subtotal was $2,794.70. Of that, $789.70, about 28%, came from rigatoni, meatballs and focaccia that had no recipe card in our costing sheet. The spreadsheet treated them as free, so every margin it printed assumed they cost nothing.

It's an easy hole to miss: the signature items get costed to the gram, and the side trays don't.

Fix it: write grams per tray for every dish you sell, even the simple ones. For us that was four recipes and about 20 minutes of work.

2. Disposables

Plates, forks, napkins and cups for 50 guests came to $46.72, about 93 cents a guest. Our costing counted them, but they never appeared on a single quote we sent, so we paid for them out of the margin.

Fix it: either add a disposables line to the quote or build the per-guest amount into your per-person price. Pick whichever fits the way you already quote.

3. Delivery

We billed three trips at $75 each, $225 in total, and propane at $20 a tank. We never recorded what a trip cost us. A trip means the van, the fuel, loading and unloading — and a staff member behind the wheel for all of it.

If a trip takes two hours of a $25-an-hour staffer plus $15 of fuel, it costs about $65, so a $75 charge barely covers it. That $65 is our estimate, not a measured number.

Fix it: log time and miles on your next three events. Then set a per-mile or per-zone rate instead of a flat fee you picked once.

4. Your own equipment

We billed four portable Gozney pizza ovens at $75 each, plus tables and work benches. Those are our own ovens. The quote charged for them, but our costing recorded nothing for cleaning, repairs or the day an oven has to be replaced.

Fix it: list what each piece of equipment cost you and how many events you expect it to last. Divide the first number by the second, and set that cost per event against what you charge on the rental line.

5. Ingredient prices that went stale

When we checked our costing sheet against receipts, 18 of our 32 ingredient prices had no receipt or date behind them at all. Some were likely 2023 prices, including mozzarella, olive oil, pepperoni and prosciutto. Our ingredients went up between 20 and 37% over that time.

A recipe cost built on old prices makes every dish look cheaper to make than it is.

Fix it: reprice your top ten ingredients from this month's receipts. Put the date next to each price so you can see when it goes stale again.

What it adds up to

The uncosted dishes, the delivery time, the equipment and the stale prices all pushed the 66% on paper higher than the truth. The disposables were a cost we carried without charging for it. Labor was the same kind of leak, and we covered it in how to price catering per person: we billed $720 of staff time at exactly what we paid.

A short checklist for every quote

• Does every dish on the quote have a recipe cost?
• Are disposables on the quote or inside the per-person price?
• Do you know what a delivery trip costs you, in hours and fuel?
• Is your equipment charged at a rate that covers its upkeep?
• Are your ingredient prices dated from the last 30 days?

Check one dish now

Start with the dish you trust least in the free catering food cost calculator. If you want a past event rebuilt line by line like ours, that is the Catering Profit Audit.