If you have ever put a catering requirement out and received three proposals you could not line up against each other, the problem was almost certainly the brief rather than the caterers. Catering is priced against variables that a short brief leaves open, and each caterer fills those gaps with different assumptions.
Specify the headcount and, separately, the service pattern. Four hundred people eating in one sitting is a different production problem from four hundred people passing through over three hours. The first needs everything ready at once; the second needs holding capacity. Caterers who assume the wrong one will be wrong on cost in both directions.
Specify the format, not just the meal. Hot delivery, chilled for regeneration, and individually packed boxes have different labour, packaging and transport costs, and different maximum holding times. If you leave format open, you are asking each caterer to guess, and the cheapest proposal will usually be the one that guessed the cheapest format.
Give the actual schedule, including the awkward parts. Meal times that fall outside normal service hours, days when the group moves, and the peak day that cannot slip — these drive staffing and production planning more than the headcount does. A caterer who sees the schedule can plan for it. A caterer who does not will discover it during the contract, which is the expensive way.
State dietary and cultural requirements at brief stage, not at menu stage. A vegetarian split, a therapeutic diet, or a group that expects a particular regional cuisine all change procurement and production, not just the recipe. Raised early they are planned in; raised late they are handled as exceptions, and exceptions cost more and fail more often.
Say what you will hold the caterer to. Temperature records, delivery windows, portion weights, substitution rules — a caterer who knows what will be measured prices for it. One who does not may be pricing a looser operation than you intend to accept.
Finally, say what you do not know. A brief that admits the headcount could move by twenty per cent gets you a proposal built for that; a brief that states a false certainty gets you a proposal that breaks when reality arrives. The most useful brief is the honest one, not the tidy one.
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