I build systems for caterers and banquet operations: event quotations with per-plate costing, advance and payment tracking, menu planning to purchase lists, staff and vessel logistics, and post-event settlement.
Kem cho, caterer bhai?
Catering is project management wearing a chef’s apron, and the season proves it every year. Five events on one weekend. Quotes in five formats, because each was written to a different family’s demands. Advances scattered across the owner’s pocket, two bank accounts and one nephew’s UPI. Purchase lists guessed the night before, at the mercy of whoever remembers last year’s quantities. Vessels dispatched and returned by memory. And the season’s actual profit discovered, approximately, sometime in July.
I have seen the diary that runs this. It is genuinely a work of art — decades of pattern-matching in one person’s handwriting — and it is also a liability, because it cannot be in two places on a Saturday and it retires when its owner does.
What does the system cover?
- Quotation engine. Menus, per-plate rates, headcount slabs, extras — versioned as the family negotiates, and they will negotiate. Every version is kept, so the final settlement references what was actually agreed.
- Advance and payment tracking. Per event, receipts issued instantly, balance visible. “Kaka, baki kitna?” gets answered in one tap instead of one argument.
- Menu to purchase list. Headcount multiplied by recipes produces a purchase list with rates attached. The 2 AM guessing game retires, and so does the over-buying that hides inside it.
- Staff and logistics. Cooks, servers, vehicles and vessels assigned per event, with returns checked back in. The missing-bartan tax ends because someone is accountable per event rather than per season.
- Event profit and loss. Quoted against actual, per function, so the pattern across the season is readable while the season is still running.
Why per-event profit changes the business
Because catering margins vary enormously by event type, and almost nobody knows which type earns. The 300-plate wedding with a fixed menu and the 80-plate corporate lunch with three dietary variations have wildly different economics per plate, and the difference is invisible in a seasonal total.
Once each function reports its own quoted-versus-actual, the pattern arrives within weeks: which menus hold their margin, which extras get given away, which venues cost more in logistics than the quote assumed. Then quoting changes — not by raising prices across the board, but by pricing the specific things that were quietly free. That is the entire difference between a busy season and a profitable one.
Related reading
/industries/restaurant — the daily-service sibling · /industries/hospitality — banquet operations inside hotels · /products/field-operations — crews and vehicles on event day · /products/whatsapp-automation — balance reminders before the function
This season, know before July
Take your last big function and reconstruct its real cost — staff, vehicles, purchases, breakage, the extras nobody billed. If that takes more than an afternoon, the season is being run on faith. /contact — chokkho hisab, season-bhar.
Questions I actually get
Five events on one weekend — can it handle that?
That is the design case. Resource clashes are flagged at booking rather than discovered on the morning: the same cooks, the same vehicles, the same vessels cannot be committed twice. Season capacity becomes something you can see before you promise it.
How does per-plate costing work when headcount changes?
The quote holds rate slabs by headcount, and the purchase list recomputes when the number moves — which it always does, usually twice, usually late. Both the family's revised number and its cost consequence are recorded, so the final settlement is arithmetic rather than argument.
Do you track vessels and equipment?
Yes — dispatched per event, checked back in on return, shortfalls attributed. Missing vessels are a quiet annual write-off in most catering businesses, precisely because nobody reconciles them per event when everyone is exhausted.
Corporate contracts with monthly billing?
Contract rates, recurring billing, consolidated GST invoices — the corporate side behaves differently from weddings and gets its own handling rather than being forced into event-shaped billing.
My staff is seasonal and changes every month.
Access is event-scoped: assign, work, settle, done. Nobody accumulates permissions they no longer need, and onboarding a new season's crew takes minutes rather than a training day.
Can we see profit per event?
Quoted versus actual, per function, including staff, vehicles, purchases and wastage. Season profit stops being a feeling in July and becomes a number you can read the week after each event, while you can still act on the pattern.