How it works
Write it once. Read it once.
Booking catering usually means describing the same event to seven strangers and then comparing seven documents that agree on nothing. This is the same job, done in one direction.
The process · four steps
Four steps. One brief.
About six minutes of your time at the front. Nothing else is asked of you until three quotes are sitting in one table.
Twelve questions, about six minutes. Date, headcount, site, service style, dietaries, budget band. You write it once and never repeat it on the phone.
We shortlist caterers who cover your date, your postcode and your style, and confirm availability before anyone is contacted. Three go forward. Not eleven.
All three price the same brief into the same structure: food per head, staffing, chef time, travel, hire, VAT and terms. A quote that won't fit the structure doesn't reach you.
One table. Same lines, same order, same assumptions, deposits and cancellation terms side by side. The comparison is the product — everything above it exists to make it possible.
Step two · matching
Three caterers, chosen before you ask.
Matching is a filter, not an auction. The brief only goes to caterers who can actually do it.
Date
Checked against the caterer's calendar before the brief is sent. A caterer who is already booked never sees it, and never sends you a polite no.
Distance
Catering is a travel-cost business. Mileage is priced on its own line rather than smuggled into the per-head rate, and caterers outside their own radius are not asked.
Style and scale
A team that does 40-cover plated dinners is not sent a 250-guest festival brief. Both would be a waste of two people's afternoons.
Three caterers, always. Your brief is not resold, not listed on a lead exchange, and not forwarded to anyone who has not confirmed they can service it.
Step three · the quote format
Same lines. Same order. Every time.
This is the constraint the whole product rests on. A quote that will not fit the structure is sent back to the caterer, not forwarded to you.
The priced lines
- Menu, per head
- Canapés on arrival
- Children's meals
- Service staff
- Chef time on site
- Travel, set-up, clear-down
- Crockery, cutlery, glassware
- Linen
- Serving equipment
Then: subtotal excluding VAT, VAT where the caterer is registered, and the total to pay.
The terms, in the same table
- Deposit
- Balance due
- Final numbers
- Cancellation
- Dietary requirements
- Insurance
Cancellation terms are part of the comparison, not a paragraph on page four. On a date a year out they can matter more than the price.
Zero is a valid answer, and a meaningful one. A caterer who includes linen writes £0 on the linen line. That is not the same as a caterer who left linen out, and the table shows the difference.
What we won't do.
- Sell your brief to eleven caterers and call it choice.
- Publish a price band for a cuisine and town we have no quotes for.
- Rank caterers by what they pay us. Nobody can pay for position.
- Take a cut from you. The fee is on the caterer, on a booking that happens.
Questions
The usual questions.
Nothing. Caterers pay a success fee on bookings that happen. You pay the caterer directly, at their price, and the fee comes out of their side.
Because more than three stops being a comparison and starts being a pile. Three is enough to see a market and few enough that every caterer takes the brief seriously.
Only by a caterer whose quote you have asked to discuss. The brief isn't resold and your number doesn't go to a lead exchange.
Weddings, six to twelve months. Corporate and private parties, two to eight weeks. Funeral receptions are routinely turned round in five to ten days and the caterers here expect that.
It doesn't reach you. We go back to the caterer with the missing lines. A quote that hides staffing inside the per-head rate isn't comparable, which makes it useless for the one job this site has.
No. It is the interquartile range of real quotes already returned in that cuisine and town, and it only appears where at least five quotes from three caterers sit behind it. Your brief may land outside it.
