A client books a caterer for eighty people in a village hall. The food is excellent. There are sixty plates, no serving spoons, glasses for wine but not for water, and nowhere to put the rubbish.
Both parties believed the other was handling it, because nobody wrote a list.
1. Itemise everything in the quotation
What you provide, what the client provides and what is hired. Three columns, no ambiguity, at the point of quoting rather than in the final week.
2. Start with the crockery count
Plates per course, side plates, bowls, and a margin for breakages. Counting exactly to the guest number is how you end up short.
3. Cover the cutlery per course
Different courses need different cutlery, and an eighty person three course meal needs considerably more than eighty sets.
4. Be specific about glassware
Wine, water, champagne for a toast and anything for soft drinks. Glassware is the item most frequently under ordered because nobody counts by type.
5. Do not forget serving equipment
Spoons, tongs, platters, chafing dishes, carving boards and anything needed to present food. Invisible in a quotation and impossible without.
6. Include hot holding
Urns, hot boxes, warmers and the power they need. This is where a village hall event fails and it is entirely predictable.
7. Cover linen properly
Tablecloths sized to the tables, napkins, and cloths for the service area. Sizes matter and a cloth too small looks worse than none.
8. Include the tables and chairs question
Whether the venue provides them, whether they are adequate and who sets them out. Setting up a room is hours of labour nobody quoted for.
9. Plan the waste and washing up
Bins, bags, somewhere for waste to go and whether anything is washed on site or returned dirty. Hire companies charge differently for each.
10. Check the hire delivery and collection windows
When equipment arrives, when it is collected and whether the venue allows it to be left overnight. This constrains everything else on the day.
11. Say who is liable for breakages
Hire companies charge for them and somebody is paying. Deciding at quotation stage prevents an unpleasant invoice afterwards.
12. Tie it to the venue assessment
What the venue actually has is the starting point, which is the groundwork described in private party and venue hire questions for bars.
13. Keep the terms consistent
Hire costs are real costs and belong in the payment schedule set out in deposit and cancellation terms caterers should publish.
14. Collect the safety critical information alongside
Allergen and dietary requirements are gathered at the same moment, which is the discipline in dietary requirement questions caterers must capture, and handling those details carefully is described in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot.
14b. Agree who counts everything back in
At the end of an event somebody has to reconcile what was hired against what is going back, and doing it at midnight in a cold hall is nobody's idea of a good time. Naming that person in advance, and allowing time for it, prevents a charge for eleven missing glasses that were actually in a box.
15. Publish a standard inclusion list
What every quotation includes as default, on your website. Clients comparing caterers can then compare properly instead of on the food figure alone.
16. Ask the equipment questions at enquiry
An assistant that asks the venue, what it provides, the guest numbers, the number of courses and whether the client wants hire arranged produces a quotation with a complete list attached. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under event planners.