Catering quotation calculator (India)
Build a professional catering quotation for any event — wedding, corporate, birthday, social gathering. Select menu items from 14 sections (welcome drinks, starters veg & non-veg, soup, salad, live counters, mains, dal, breads, rice & biryani, desserts, beverages), enter your cost per head, add staffing, equipment rental, decor and transport. GST auto-applied at the correct outdoor catering rate (5% or 18%). Grand total and per-head price calculate live. Print A4 portrait quotation for the client or export CSV for your records. Saves in browser between client calls. No signup.
GST on outdoor catering in India
Outdoor catering services — where food is supplied and served at a location other than your restaurant premises — attracts GST at 5% without input tax credit or 18% with input tax credit (the caterer's choice, but the client should know which applies). Most small and mid-size caterers opt for 5% because it lowers the client-facing invoice amount and they may not have large ITC to claim anyway. Registered caterers with significant raw material and equipment procurement may benefit from the 18% + ITC route — run the numbers with your CA before quoting.
If you supply food for a wedding or corporate event at your own restaurant premises, that is treated as a restaurant service (5% GST, no ITC for most formats) rather than outdoor catering. The distinction matters when writing the invoice.
Per-head pricing and margin
The tool calculates your cost per head — menu raw material cost + your allocation of staffing, equipment and logistics. This is your floor price. Your quote price per head should be cost ÷ (1 − target margin). At a 35% margin, if your cost is ₹600/head, the quote price is ₹600 ÷ 0.65 = ₹923/head before GST. Catering margins in India typically run 30–45% for standard events; wedding catering with live counters and complex menus can sustain 40–50% if you have the brand to command it.
Always confirm the final guest count 48 hours before the event. A 10% overcount buffer (cook for 110% of confirmed count) is standard for buffet-format events where guests tend to stay longer. Charge the confirmed count, but quote the buffer cost into your per-head price so you are not absorbing it.
Where this fits
- Recipe cost card — build the cost per portion for each dish before you enter the per-head cost in this quotation tool
- Food cost calculator — once the event is done, use this to check whether actual food cost matched the quoted cost per head
- Inter-store transfer note — if you are drawing stock from a central kitchen or commissary for the catering event, this GST-compliant transfer note handles the stock movement
- Monthly P&L statement — catering revenue, staffing costs, and equipment depreciation all roll into your monthly P&L; keeping catering as a separate revenue line shows its contribution margin clearly
- P4 — Multi-outlet & operations pillar — articles on catering operations, commissary kitchens, and managing multiple revenue streams from a single restaurant