To price catering per head in the UK, add up your food cost per person, then multiply by 3 to 4 to cover overheads, labour, and profit. As a working rule, most caterers land between £15 and £75 per head depending on the event type, with food costs typically representing 25–35% of the price you charge. The trick is knowing your actual numbers rather than copying a competitor's menu price.
Here's exactly how to build that figure from the ground up.
Everything begins with what the food actually costs you. Not a guess — the real, ingredient-by-ingredient total.
Take every dish on your proposed menu and cost each ingredient based on what you pay your supplier, scaled to the portion size you'll serve. A chicken main might cost you £2.80 in raw ingredients. The accompanying sides, sauce, and garnish add another £1.90. A starter and dessert push your per-head food cost to, say, £9.50.
That £9.50 is your foundation. Get it wrong and every other calculation collapses.
A few things people forget to include:
Once you know your true food cost, you don't just add a markup — you work backwards from a target food cost percentage.
The catering industry standard in the UK is to keep food cost between 25% and 35% of the menu price. Lower percentages give you more margin but require efficient buying; higher percentages are common for premium ingredient-led menus.
The formula:
Menu price per head = Food cost per head ÷ Target food cost %
So if your food costs £9.50 per head and you want a 30% food cost:
£9.50 ÷ 0.30 = £31.67 per head (food element only)
That remaining 70% isn't all profit — it absorbs everything else.
Labour is the cost most new caterers underprice, and it's often the difference between a profitable job and a busy one that loses money.
Account for:
Calculate total staff hours, multiply by their hourly rate (remember to include employer National Insurance and pension contributions for employed staff), then divide across your guest count.
Example: a 100-guest event needs 60 total staff hours at an average loaded cost of £14/hour = £840, or £8.40 per head in labour.
Your business costs money to run even when you're not cooking. Spread these across your jobs:
Some of these are per-event (equipment hire, disposables), and some are general business overheads you recover as a percentage. A common approach is to add 10–15% of your subtotal to cover general overheads.
Profit is not what's left over by accident — it's a number you decide on. After food, labour, and overheads are covered, a healthy catering business targets a net profit of 10–20% on top.
If you skip this step, you've built a job that pays your costs and your wage but leaves nothing to reinvest, save for quiet months, or grow.
Let's price a three-course wedding for 100 guests:
| Cost element | Per head |
|---|---|
| Food cost | £9.50 |
| Labour | £8.40 |
| Equipment & disposables | £4.00 |
| Overhead recovery (12%) | £2.63 |
| Subtotal | £24.53 |
| Profit margin (15%) | £3.68 |
| Price per head | £28.21 |
You'd likely round this to £29–£30 per head, giving you a clean, defensible price.
Notice your food cost (£9.50) is exactly 33% of a £29 price — right in the healthy range.
These vary by region (London commands more) and quality tier, but as a benchmark:
Corporate and private events sit at the lower-to-mid end; weddings and premium events sit higher because of the service expectation and risk.
Copying competitors' prices. Their costs, suppliers, and overheads aren't yours. A headline price tells you nothing about their margin.
Forgetting minimum numbers. A 20-person event has the same setup and travel as a 60-person one. Set a minimum spend or a higher per-head rate for small bookings.
Ignoring scaling errors. A recipe that works for 8 doesn't simply multiply by 12. Yields, waste, and seasoning don't scale linearly, and getting the maths wrong silently eats your margin.
Not updating for ingredient inflation. A menu costed six months ago may now be losing you money. Re-cost regularly.
The pricing logic above is straightforward — but the accuracy depends entirely on knowing your real food cost per head, scaled correctly to your guest numbers, with up-to-date ingredient prices. That's where most caterers either guess or burn an evening with a spreadsheet.
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