A caterer sells a price per guest, but rarely knows what that price leaves once the ingredients are paid for: a menu's food cost gets rebuilt by hand on a spreadsheet, and goes stale the moment a supplier raises a price. Then there is the call the night before, a guest allergic to tree nuts, that needs an answer right away. This application costs your menus and blocks an event that would ignore an excluded allergen.
Who the application is for
For event caterers who build menus from costed recipes, bill per guest, and need to answer quickly about allergens present in a menu.
What the application does
- Builds a menu from costed recipes, each with its course and quantity per guest, and works out the food cost per person from them.
- Works out, for each event, the total food cost, the margin and the food cost ratio, based on the number of guests.
- Carries the allergen list up from the recipes to the menu, to answer a guest's question in an instant.
- Refuses to confirm an event while an allergen the client has excluded is still on its menu, even when the exclusion was added later on an ingredient record.
- Creates a quotation from the event in one step, without ever overwriting one already linked to it.
- Feeds the list to be made into the day's production plan, adding to what is already planned rather than replacing it.
- Tracks loaned equipment and its return, with the shortfall worked out on its own.
Day to day
- Cost your recipes once in the base application: food cost, allergens and portions.
- Build a menu by putting recipes together by course, with the quantity per guest.
- Create the event, enter the number of guests and note the allergens the client asks to exclude.
- Before confirming, let the application compare the menu to the exclusion list and resolve any conflict it flags.
- Generate the quotation, then send the list to production on the day.
- After the event, record the equipment that came back; the shortfall shows up on its own.
What the application does not do
- It tracks no payment collection: the deposit shown stays an expected amount, with no invoice or payment reconciliation created.
- It does not schedule staff or vehicles for the event.
- It reserves no stock: the production list is shown, not committed against your available quantities.
- It only costs the food: labour, transport and equipment hire still have to be covered from the margin shown.
- It assures no regulatory compliance on allergens: it is a working tool, and the information given to the client remains your responsibility.
Getting started
Cost your most-used recipes first in the base application, with their allergens and food cost, then build a first menu before creating your first event and noting the exclusions the client has asked for.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.