The Catering Numbers Book. A Practical Guide to Pricing, Profit, Labor, Cash, and Better Catering Decisions - Freddy MacKenzie

Catering can look successful right up until you realize the numbers don’t work.

A full calendar, large invoices, and happy clients don’t necessarily mean you’re making money. Food cost, labor, travel, rentals, overtime, waste, payment timing, overhead, and dozens of small expenses can turn a busy catering operation into a business that works constantly and keeps too little.

The Catering Numbers Book is a practical guide to understanding what catering work actually costs and using those numbers to make better decisions.

Chef Freddy MacKenzie takes readers through the financial and operational realities behind catering, including food cost and yield, labor, event profitability, pricing, minimums, service styles, rentals, travel, bar programs, deposits, cash flow, capacity, equipment, insurance, staffing, budgeting, growth, and long-term business planning.

Rather than handing you a collection of supposedly perfect industry percentages, the book teaches you how to understand your own operation. You’ll learn how to estimate before an event, record what actually happened, compare the two, identify where money or labor disappeared, and use that information to improve the next quote.

Inside you’ll learn how to:

• Reconstruct the true profitability of an event

• Calculate recipe cost, yield, labor cost, margin, and break-even

• Price weddings, corporate events, drop-offs, travel, and service

• Understand the difference between revenue, profit, contribution, and cash

• Recognize when menu complexity and staffing are costing more than expected

• Build better minimums, deposits, payment schedules, and cancellation policies

• Track variance instead of repeatedly calling overruns "unexpected"

• Make smarter decisions about clients, capacity, equipment, staffing, and growth

• Use worksheets, formulas, and decision checks to evaluate real catering work

This isn’t a book about turning caterers into accountants. It’s about giving chefs, caterers, and food-business owners enough financial clarity to decide which jobs to take, what to charge, where the operation is leaking money, and what needs to change.

Cook better. Price smarter. Stop losing money.