Catering Quotation Format for Wedding & Event Menus.

A plate rate is a bundle, and the quotation has to say what is in it. In the sample the ₹1,150 buffet covers two starters, four main-course dishes, breads, rice, salad, raita and a dessert. Welcome drinks are a separate ₹120 line because clients often ask to drop them. Behind that number, suppose raw materials cost you ₹500, cooks and helpers ₹140, gas ₹45, and you allow 8 percent of raw materials for wastage, another ₹40. The plate costs ₹725, which leaves ₹425 of contribution, or 37 percent. On 320 plates the contribution is ₹1,36,000, and it has to pay for the supervisor, transport and staff meals. The Plate Costing tab does this sum with your own costs and tells you how many plates cover the fixed cost. In the sample it is 95. All costs here are illustrative.

The minimum guarantee is the clause that protects your kitchen, and clients read it as a trap unless you explain it. Here it is 320 plates. If 280 guests arrive, the client still pays for 320, which is 40 empty plates and ₹46,000 before tax or ₹48,300 with it. It is fair, because you bought and cooked for 320. To keep it fair, write the counting rule next to the number. Adults and children above five count. Say whether the band, the decor crew and the drivers count, and say it either way. Ask for the final count seven days before the event, and let the client raise it after that date but not lower it. Published catering guides make the same point: get the counting rules in writing.

Extra plates are where quotations leak money. Guests above the guarantee are billed at ₹1,250 and not ₹1,150, because you are cooking for them at short notice and paying for extra stewards. Take the 360-guest version of this dinner: 320 plates at ₹1,150, 40 at ₹1,250, welcome drinks for all 360, and the same counters, staff, hire and kitchen lines. The taxable value rises from ₹4,87,800 to ₹5,42,600, GST becomes ₹27,130 and the client pays ₹5,69,730. The client pays ₹57,540 more than the quotation, about 11 percent, for 40 extra guests. The Guarantee Check tab produces this final bill from the counted guests, so the balance due is a number and not a conversation at midnight.

Live counters and staff are priced on hours, not on guests. Published guides put a live counter at roughly ₹15 to ₹25 a guest on top of the plate rate, which for 320 guests is ₹4,800 to ₹8,000. The sample charges ₹7,500 a counter for a chef, a helper, gas and made-to-order wastage over 3.5 hours. Waited service is charged per person, ₹900 for each of 26 stewards, roughly one for every twelve guests. The term sheet adds ₹10,000 for each extra service hour, which is close to what 26 stewards and two counters cost you per hour. A baraat that starts late then becomes the client's cost and not yours, and a request for a third counter has a price waiting for it.

Tax on a catering quotation is simpler than most caterers fear and more costly than they hope. Outdoor catering is SAC 996334 at 5 percent, which is 2.5 percent CGST plus 2.5 percent SGST, and the rate carries a condition: no input tax credit. On this quotation it comes to ₹24,390, ₹12,195 each. The catch sits on your side of the ledger. If you buy ₹1,20,000 of chafing dishes and crockery with 18 percent GST included, ₹18,305 of tax is inside that price and you cannot claim it back, so it belongs in your rates. Comparison shoppers trip on this too. A hotel banquet at a property that qualifies as specified premises charges 18 percent with credit. A hotel plate of ₹1,400 comes to ₹1,652 with tax, while your ₹1,150 comes to ₹1,207.50. Across 320 plates that gap is ₹1,42,240, and it vanishes if the client compares the pre-tax numbers.

Keep the validity short. Ten days is enough for a caterer, because paneer, vegetables, dairy and LPG move, and an approval that arrives in the third week should be re-priced and not honoured out of embarrassment. The payment schedule is 30-50-20: ₹1,53,657 on booking, ₹2,56,095 seven days before and ₹1,02,438 within seven days after. By the event you have collected 80 percent, ₹4,09,752, which pays for most of the raw material before the first pot goes on the stove. Each advance needs a receipt voucher under Section 31(3)(d), because tax on an advance for a service is due when you receive it, and the vouchers are adjusted on the final invoice.

One more term earns its place: the tasting. Say how many people come to it, and that a change to the menu afterwards is re-priced while a like-for-like swap is free. Without that line, a request to replace the paneer dish with mushroom becomes a ₹150-a-plate favour, and ₹150 across 320 plates is ₹48,000. Send the client a PDF exported from the Word version, and keep the Excel file, which holds your costing tab, to yourself.