Catering is quoted per head, which makes it look as though the cost rises with the guests. A large part of it does not. The kitchen time, the drive, the van, the equipment and the setting up and taking down are largely fixed, and they get divided among however many people turn up. So an honest per-head price should fall as the guest list grows, and one that does not move is worth a question.More
Cooking for 120 is not twice the work of cooking for 60. The van makes one trip either way, the tables go up once, the kitchen is booked for the day whether it produces sixty plates or a hundred and twenty. What genuinely scales is the food, and some of the service. What does not scale is a block of hours and a block of kit, and that block is sitting inside a number labelled per person, where it does not belong. Put your quote in below, tell us the kitchen hours and the crew, and the page splits the bill into the part that moves with the head count and the part that does not, then reprices the per head at a second guest count so you can see how far it ought to travel. One warning before you start, and the page repeats it: the gap between what you pay and what a cook earns is not a markup. It is the food, the hire, the van, the insurance, the tax, the quoting nobody pays for and the weekends with no wedding in them. Nobody publishes what wedding catering costs a head, we are not going to invent it, and the calculator does arithmetic on the figure you were actually handed.
The whole bill, at your per-head price
$7,500
The kitchen and the crew, at a restaurant cook's median wage. This part barely moves with the head count$1,582
The rest: the food, the hire, the van, the insurance, the tax, the business. NOT profit$5,918
A per-head price that does not fall as the guest list grows is telling you something.
Cooking for 120 is not twice the work of cooking for 60, and the van makes one trip either way. The kitchen hours,
the drive, the kit, the setting up and the taking down are largely fixed, and a fixed block divided among more
people is a smaller number per person. The food scales. A good deal of the rest does not.More
On the default numbers, here is what that looks like. A quote of $75 a head for 100 guests
is a bill of $7,500. The hours entered come to 88 person-hours, and the wage cost of those hours is $1,582.24 at a
restaurant cook's median and $2,642.64 at a chef's. Spread across 100 guests that is $15.82 or $26.43 a head, and it
is sitting inside a figure labelled per person, where it does not belong. Move to 150 guests, hold the hours still,
and the honest per-head price drops to $69.73 at the cook's wage or $66.19 at the chef's. That is a fall of $5.27 or
$8.81 a head, and it is a marker rather than a forecast, for the two reasons we give next.
We are wrong in two directions at once and we would rather say so than pick the flattering one.
Our fixed block is the wage cost of the hours you gave us, AND NO MORE THAN THAT. It understates the truth, because the van,
the equipment hire, the tables and the linen are largely fixed too, and we have not priced them: you did not give us
a number and we are not going to invent one. It also overstates it, because a party of 150 probably does need a
little more prep and perhaps another pair of hands. The two errors push opposite ways, we cannot net them out, and
so the figure above is not a floor and not a ceiling: it is a marker for a conversation. What survives both of them
is the SHAPE: part of a per-head price is not per-head, and a caterer quoting the same figure for 60 and for 120 is
asserting that none of it is.
And all of it assumes the price you typed covers the people as well as the food. If your caterer
bills the crew, the hire and the delivery on lines of their own, the wage cost of those hours is not inside the
per-head figure at all, and taking it out of that figure would be removing a cost the number never carried. Put the
all-in price in, or the split below is not describing your quote.
And the money between your price and a cook's wage is not a markup. Out of it come the food, the
hire, the van, the fuel, the linen, the insurance, the licence, the payroll tax, the hours spent quoting weddings
that never book, and the weekends with nothing in the diary. We do not know what your caterer's costs are, we have
no sourced price to compare your quote against, and we are not going to imply you are being fleeced. What we can
hand you is a question that is specific enough to be answerable.
§ 02 The part of the price that is not per person
Person-hours you have entered: the kitchen, plus the crew on the day88 hours
Share of the bill that is the wage cost of those hours, at a restaurant cook's wage21.1%
Your per-head price at the second guest list, if those hours do not move$69.73
The same, if a chef and head cook is doing the cooking$66.19
The wages are BLS's and they are exact. Everything else on this page is your own input: the per-head price, the guest counts, the kitchen hours and the crew. We publish no catering price, we assert no food-cost percentage, and we do not tell you what your caterer's costs are. What we do is split your own bill into the part that scales with the head count and the part that does not, and hand you the question that follows from it.
Recommended next steps
A meaningful slice of the bill is the wage cost of hours that will not grow much when the guest list does. That is normal and it is not a scandal, but it does mean the per-head price has somewhere to travel. Take the projected figure above into the conversation and ask what changes between your two guest counts: the prep, the crew, or neither. Remember that the rest of the bill is food, hire, the van, insurance and tax, and not margin.
A chef and head cook earns a median of $30.03 an hour. A restaurant cook earns $17.98. The US median across every occupation is $24.51.More
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Chefs and Head Cooks, SOC 35-1011: 200,040 employed, $62,470 a year. Cooks, Restaurant, SOC 35-2014: 1,409,890 employed, $37,390 a year. One of those is above the American median and the other is well below it, and both of them are in the kitchen cooking your dinner. Which of the two is doing the cooking at your wedding is a fair question, and the answer moves the arithmetic a long way.
The kitchen hours, the van, the kit and the setup are largely fixed. The food is what scales.More
Cooking for 120 is not twice the work of cooking for 60. The menu is written once. The shopping is one trip. The van is loaded once, driven once and unloaded once. The tables go up once and come down once. More guests means more plates, more hands during service and more food, and it does not mean twice the prep. So a bill made of a fixed block plus a per-head block cannot honestly be quoted as a single per-head figure that never moves.
Which is why the honest per-head price should fall as the head count rises.More
A fixed block divided among more people is a smaller number each. On the page's defaults the wage cost of the hours is $1,582.24, which is $15.82 a head across 100 guests and $10.55 across 150. Nothing about the job changed. The division did. If your caterer's per-head figure is identical at both counts, they are telling you that no part of the job is fixed, and it is worth finding out whether they mean it.
The gap between your per-head price and what a cook earns is not profit, and we will not call it profit.More
Out of it come the food, the drink, the hire of everything from ovens to teaspoons, the linen, the van, the fuel, the insurance, the licence, the employer's half of payroll tax, the hours spent quoting weddings that never book, and the weekends with nothing in the diary at all. Calling the remainder profit would be the easiest lie on this page and it would also be the stupidest, because it is plainly not true. What is left after all of that is the business, and we do not know how big it is.
Ask for the staffing plan at two guest counts. It is the question the whole page is for.More
How many people are cooking, and are they chefs or cooks? How many are serving? What changes if we go from 100 guests to 150: does the crew grow, does the prep grow, and by how much? A caterer who has thought about their own costs will have those answers ready and will not mind giving them. A per-head figure that is the same at both counts is not proof of anything, but it does mean the fixed block has been smeared across the head count, and you are entitled to know how big it is.
Nobody publishes a per-head catering price, and nobody publishes the food share either. We did not invent them.More
BLS gives the wage and no billed rate. Our own data directory has no caterer row in it. The Census product file that would carry a unit price collects no quantity for a service, on 136,505 of its 137,429 US rows. So the price is yours, the hours are yours, and everything the page tells you is arithmetic on figures you supplied. What we did NOT open is named in full in the sources note, rather than quietly folded into a confident refusal.
Sourced, and it is only the wages. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics,
May 2025. Chefs and Head Cooks (SOC 35-1011): 200,040 employed, median $30.03 an hour. Cooks, Restaurant (SOC
35-2014): 1,409,890 employed, median $17.98 an hour. All occupations: $24.51. Ours, and declared:
the default hours and the tier boundaries. Yours: the per-head price, the guest counts and every
hour figure, because nobody publishes a catering price and nobody measures a catering hour.More
A head chef earns above the US median and a line cook well below it, and both are in your kitchen.
$30.03 an hour against $17.98, with $24.51 as the median across every occupation in America. Divide the first by the
second and you get 1.7, and that gap sits inside a single kitchen. It is why the page reports a BAND rather than a
point: which of the two is actually cooking
your wedding changes the arithmetic by a lot, and it is a perfectly fair question to put to the caterer. A quote
built on a chef and two cooks is a different animal from one built on six cooks, and only one of those people is
being paid above the American median.
Rule 22, and it matters here more than usual. Neither of these SOC codes is a catering code. Chefs
and Head Cooks covers the person running a restaurant kitchen, a hotel kitchen or an institutional one. Cooks,
Restaurant covers the line in a restaurant. BLS has no catering-cook occupation, so what we are quoting is the wage
of the TRADE A CATERER HIRES FROM, and not a measurement of catering payroll. It is the closest published figure
and it is not an exact fit, and we would rather tell you that than let the fit look tighter than it is.
And the survey excludes the self-employed. BLS's own FAQ: "Does OEWS have occupational employment
estimates that include the self-employed? No." So the 200,040 and the 1,409,890 are the chefs and cooks on
somebody's payroll, and a great many caterers are exactly the people that survey does not count. Nothing on this
page is divided by either number, and nothing on this page should be.
Where the food figure would come from, if it existed. It does not, and we looked: see the
registration in the source. The food cost here is therefore never a percentage we picked. It is whatever is left
after the wage cost of YOUR hours comes out of YOUR bill, it is mixed in with the hire and the van and the
insurance, and the page never separates it, because separating it would require a figure that nobody publishes.
Where every number above comes from
Wage data
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national. Chefs and Head Cooks (SOC 35-1011): 200,040 employed, median $30.03/hr, $62,470/yr, 10th percentile $18.22/hr, 90th percentile $47.39/hr. Cooks, Restaurant (SOC 35-2014): 1,409,890 employed, median $17.98/hr, $37,390/yr, 10th percentile $13.80/hr, 90th percentile $23.03/hr. All occupations (SOC 00-0000): median $24.51/hr
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, by state. Chefs and Head Cooks: a median wage published for 53 areas, from $14.81/hr in Puerto Rico to $38.43/hr in Rhode Island. Cooks, Restaurant: a median wage published for 54 areas, from $11.03/hr in Guam to $22.50/hr in Washington
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics FAQ: 'Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No.' Which is why the employment counts above are the chefs and cooks on somebody's payroll, and why nothing on this page is divided by them
Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.
The whole page assumes your per-head price COVERS the hours you entered. If the crew is billed separately, it does not.
We take the wage cost of your hours out of your per-head price, which is arithmetic that only means something if those hours were inside that price to begin with. Staffing, hire and delivery are frequently quoted on lines of their own, and a per-head figure built that way carries the food and little else. Subtract wages from it and we would be taking out a cost it never carried, inflating the fixed block and inventing a fall that is not there. So fold the crew line back in before you type the price, or read nothing here as being about your quote. This assumption is load-bearing, it is the one the reader has to check rather than us, and it cuts the other way from the finding rather than for it.
The fixed block is only the wage cost of YOUR hours, which understates it.
The van, the fuel, the equipment hire, the tables, the linen and the setup gear are largely fixed too, and none of them is in our figure, because you did not give us a number for them and we are not going to invent one. So this error pushes the true fall UP: the real fixed block is bigger than the one we have priced. It does not make the figure a FLOOR, because the assumption below pushes the other way, and we are not going to quietly count the error that flatters us and forget the one that does not.
And we hold the hours still when the guest count changes, which overstates it.
A party of 150 probably does need a little more prep and perhaps another pair of hands. Our projection assumes the kitchen hours and the crew do not move at all. That error pushes the opposite way from the one above, we cannot net the two out, and so the projected per-head price is a marker for a conversation rather than a forecast. What survives both errors is the shape of the thing, which is the finding.
Neither SOC code is a catering code, and the page will not pretend the fit is exact.
Chefs and Head Cooks (35-1011) is the person running a restaurant, hotel or institutional kitchen. Cooks, Restaurant (35-2014) is the line in a restaurant. BLS publishes no catering-cook occupation. What we are quoting is the wage of the trade a caterer hires from, which is the closest published figure and is not the same thing. Rule 22: a SOC code is a bucket, and this bucket is wider than the job.
BLS excludes the self-employed, so nothing here is divided by an employment count.
"Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No." A great many caterers are self-employed, and the survey does not see them. The 200,040 chefs and the 1,409,890 cooks are the ones on a payroll. They are on the page to give a sense of scale, and the page does no arithmetic with them.
The hour defaults are OURS and they are guesses, because nobody measures this.
40 hours of prep and a crew of 6 for 8 hours is a plausible shape for a hundred-guest wedding and it is not a measurement. It is the number the whole argument turns on, which is precisely why we hand it back to you and tell you to get it from the caterer instead.
Frequently asked questions
How much does catering cost per person?
Nobody publishes a national figure and we are not going to invent one. What is worth knowing is that the question has the wrong shape. Part of a catering bill genuinely is per person: the food, and some of the service. Part of it is not: the kitchen hours, the drive, the van, the equipment hire, the setting up and the taking down. That second part is fixed, or close to it, and when it is divided among more guests it becomes a smaller number each. So there is no single per-head price, there is a per-head price AT A HEAD COUNT, and it should come down as the count goes up. Put your own quote in above and the page will show you by how much.
Why doesn't my caterer's per-head price fall when I add guests?
It might be that their crew and their prep really do grow one-for-one with the head count, in which case the flat figure is honest and they will be able to show you the staffing plan that proves it. It might be that they price simply, because a single number is easy to quote and easy to compare. It might be that the fixed block has been smeared across an assumed head count and they have never taken it apart. This page does not tell you which, because it cannot, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. What it does is size the fixed block on your own numbers so that you can ask a specific question instead of a vague one.
What does a caterer's kitchen actually earn?
BLS puts a chef and head cook at a median of $30.03 an hour, or $62,470 a year, and a restaurant cook at $17.98 an hour, or $37,390. The median across every occupation in America is $24.51, so the first is above it and the second is well below it, and both of them are in the kitchen. Read those two figures with two warnings. Neither occupation is a catering occupation: they are restaurant-kitchen codes, and a caterer hires from that trade rather than being measured by it. And BLS excludes the self-employed, so the 200,040 chefs and 1,409,890 cooks it counts are the ones on somebody's payroll.
Am I being overcharged for catering?
We do not know, we have no sourced price to compare yours against, and a comparison to nothing is worth nothing. We are also not going to imply it, because the money between what you pay and what a cook earns is not a markup: it is the food, the hire, the van, the linen, the insurance, the licence, the payroll tax, the quoting nobody pays for and the weekends with no wedding in them. What the page can do is show you which part of your per-head price ought to move when the head count moves, and that is a far better thing to take into a conversation than a suspicion.
So what should I actually ask the caterer?
Four things, and none of them is an accusation. One: what is in the per-head price, and what is billed on top, so that two quotes can be compared at all. Two: how many hours of prep and kitchen time does this menu take, and how many people are on it. Three: what is the staffing plan at my head count and at fifty more, because that answer tells you how much of the job is fixed. Four: which of those people are chefs and which are cooks. A caterer who has thought about their own costs will answer all four without blinking, and the answers will tell you more than any average could.
