Guides
Why a quote takes ten days and what that costs, the difference between a service charge and a gratuity, what fifteen per cent actually adds up to over a year, and why sales tax on food, delivery and service are three separate questions. Written for owners, not for search engines — each one is useful even if you never hire us. We are not attorneys or accountants, and every guide says where you need one.
Is catering taxable in your state? Food, mandatory service charges, gratuities, delivery and rentals, state by state for caterers, each answer linked to the state’s own tax guidance.
Somebody asks what it would cost to feed forty people. Between that question and your answer sit two phone calls, a spreadsheet and a week and a half — and most of it is not work anyone is paying you for.
A mandatory service charge and a tip are two different things with two different legal treatments, and the customer will assume the wrong one unless the quote says which. This is the most common argument on the day.
Prepared food, delivery and the service charge are taxed separately and differently from state to state. Here is what actually varies, so the conversation with your CPA is a short one.
The headcount you are given first is never the headcount you cook for. The guarantee date is how this trade has always handled that, and it works better when it is a date rather than a phone call.
"Guest 4 is allergic to nuts" typed into a comments box is information that has to survive being read by three people. Marked on the dish, it survives on its own.
Fifteen per cent sounds like a marketing expense. Applied to every order for five years, including the ones that were already yours, it is something else.
Every caterer has a floor below which a job is not worth doing. There are two ways to enforce it, and one of them loses the customer for the sake of eighty dollars.
Catering Deck has no single pricing shape, and software built around one of them makes the other four awkward. Here are the five that actually occur, and what each one gets wrong.
Two common ways of billing catering software both charge you more for trying harder — a percentage of every order, or a fee per quote sent. Both are a tax on the thing you are attempting to do.
The tools that book haircuts and dentist appointments are cheap, mature and will happily take a catering booking. Here is the part of catering they have no concept of.
Delivery radius is one of the two questions every enquiry contains, and answering it after a phone call rather than on the page wastes everybody's afternoon.
A cancellation two days out is not the same as a cancellation two months out, and a single non-refundable deposit treats them as if they were. What a sliding policy actually needs to say.
Cooking for money from your own kitchen is regulated differently in every state, and cottage food laws almost never cover catering. What to check before you take a booking.
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