The Quote Said £2,400. The Real Bill Was £3,350.
A caterer quotes £2,400 for a 60-guest wedding reception. The food costs come to £1,150. Margin looks fine on paper. Then the invoices land: two extra staff for the clear-down, a van hire for the chafing dishes, £210 of linen, a parking permit, and an hour of overtime because the venue only gave access at 2pm. The real cost is £3,350 and the job loses money.
Nobody lied. The quote simply never listed the costs that sit around the food. This is the most common way a small catering business bleeds margin, and it happens on every event that gets priced from the menu alone.
The prompt that closes the gap
The prompt Create a Per-Event Catering Quote That Itemises Every Cost Clients Forget forces the whole event onto the page before a price is set. You give it the event type, guest count, venue, service style, menu and dietary needs. It returns a full quote with seven parts: food per head, staffing, equipment and consumables, travel and surcharges, margin and VAT, exclusions, and a payment schedule.
A worked example
Input: a 60-guest birthday buffet, venue with no kitchen, three dishes, one vegan and two gluten-free guests, margin target 30%.
| Line | Typical first guess | With the prompt |
|---|---|---|
| Food | £1,150 | £1,150 |
| Staff (4 people, 9 hours incl. setup and clear-down) | £300 | £684 |
| Equipment hire, linen, serving kit | £0 | £420 |
| Van, fuel, parking | £0 | £95 |
| Waste disposal and consumables | £0 | £60 |
The prompt then applies the margin and VAT, shows the arithmetic, and gives a per-head figure the client can compare against other quotes. It also lists what is excluded: extra hours, late changes to guest numbers, corkage. That list matters as much as the price, because it is what you point to when a client asks for "just ten more people" the day before.
Where the value is
- Margin protection. The hidden costs are on the page before you commit, so the price reflects the real job.
- Fewer awkward conversations. A client who sees a line for staffing and a line for hire rarely argues about the total.
- Time saved. A detailed quote that used to take an hour of spreadsheet work comes together in a few minutes, and you review it rather than build it.
- Assumptions out in the open. The prompt flags anything it had to guess, so you know which numbers to check.
How to use it
- Open the prompt, copy it, and fill in the bracketed placeholders with your real event details. Use your own hourly rates and hire costs where you have them.
- Paste it into any AI assistant and read the arithmetic line by line. Correct anything that does not match your supplier prices.
- Send the quote with the exclusions list intact, and set the deadline for final numbers in writing.
Run it against your last three events. If the prompt finds costs your original quotes missed, you have just found where the money went.