Catering quotes priced per person, with the margin per plate.
Load the template for the event, set the headcount, put in your rates. The client gets a clean per-guest quote. You get to know your food cost survived the tasting before the contract is signed.
You could keep fighting the spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets are free, and they price accordingly. Delete one row and the formulas give up. The version history lives in the filename. After all that, it still prints like a bank statement. Estimatery already knows the shape of an estimate. You fill in the numbers.
How it works
Pick a template: wedding, corporate, BBQ, holiday party, food truck. Every line the event needs is already there, menu through staff gratuity. The service charge and the gratuity are different lines, because they're different things.
Add what each line costs you, food, staff hours, rentals, and it shows what you'll actually make, updated as you type. Only you see this part. The client sees a menu, not your supplier invoices.
One switch shows exactly what the client gets: menu, headcount, prices, one total. Send it as a PDF, Excel file, or link, while they're still hungry.
A screenshot of the actual builder. Not a mockup. We checked.
Built for the person who actually watches the budget
Generic quoting tools fit no one in particular. Estimatery starts from how catering is actually priced: per person, per staff hour, per rental. Real numbers for you, a clean quote for the client.
Tell it what each part costs you and it shows what you'd actually take home, updated as you type. No second spreadsheet. No midnight math.
The client PDF gets a real letterhead and totals that line up. The Pro version adds your name and logo. Your logo. On documents. Living the dream.
Your working version has your costs and profit. The client's version has prices and a total. Same estimate, nothing copy-pasted between files, nothing to forget.
Never price the same event twice
Each template is the line-item checklist for that kind of event, menu through breakdown. Prices stay blank because they're yours, and your food costs change weekly anyway. Load one, set the headcount, price the rest.
Per guest, plated or buffet. The headcount will change. The template won't mind.
Boxed lunches to plated dinners. Someone in accounting will ask for the receipt.
Brisket math, per person. The smoker started before your client woke up.
Passed apps, open bar, coat check. December books itself in September.
Minimum guarantee, service window, headcount. The line is part of the show.
Five templates covering how catering actually gets quoted. The headcount deadline goes in the terms, in writing. Planning the whole event? That's its own set.
Everyone else makes you give something up.
A spreadsheet is free, but you do everything. An invoicing app hides your costs, then bills you monthly forever, like a gym. We’re the only column without a catch. We checked twice.
| Estimatery | Spreadsheet | Invoicing app | Template PDF | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Industry line items, built in | ● | —blank page | ○generic | ○generic |
| Live margin while you price | ● | ○by hand | — | — |
| Client never sees your costs | ● | ○if you remember | ● | ● |
| Pay once, no subscription | ● | ●free | —monthly | ○ |
● built in · ○ manual or partial · — not really
Free is the whole tool
Nothing in the builder or the exports is held back. Pro exists to put your name on the paperwork. The national debt is not our business model.
Questions
The full guide (units, tax math, deposits, exports) lives on the Help page. It’s genuinely thorough. We’re as surprised as you.
No. The whole builder and every export work without one. Your quote autosaves in this browser, which means it lives on your machine, which means it's already more organized than the walk-in. A free account adds one cloud-saved estimate; Pro makes that unlimited.
Yes. Unlimited sections and lines, all templates, all modifiers, the live P&L, and every export format. Pro only changes whose name is on the paperwork and lifts the cloud-save cap. Free, unlike brisket. We're doing what we can.
No, and your quote should say so. The service charge is a percentage on the subtotal that covers overhead: kitchen, insurance, vehicles, admin. Estimatery applies it as the document-level fee, labeled Service charge out of the box. Staff gratuity is a separate visible line in every catering template, so clients see both, understand both, and nobody's servers get shorted by a mislabeled percentage.
No. Client views, exports, and share links are built from a copy that only ever contained client-facing fields. Costs, margins, and internal notes are never in the file. There's no toggle to forget because there is no toggle. Your food cost stays in the kitchen.
No. You pay $39 once. No renewal, no monthly fee, no per-event cut. It puts your branding on client-facing exports, removes our footer, makes cloud saves unlimited, and adds a reusable catalog of your saved line items.
Anonymous quotes live in your browser's local storage. Nothing leaves your machine unless you share, export, or save to an account. Share links carry a compressed, client-safe copy inside the link itself. Math, not magic.