From "Can You Do 50 People?" to Event Execution

Thursday 3:47 PM: The Catering Inquiry

Your phone buzzes. Email from a corporate client:

“Hi! We’re looking to cater lunch for a company event next Thursday (8 days from now). About 50 people. Can you do Italian family-style? What’s the pricing? Need final headcount by Tuesday.”

You reply: “Absolutely! Let me send you a quote.”

You open your catering quote spreadsheet (last updated 6 months ago, prices probably wrong). You adjust for 50 people, add 15% service charge, email the quote. Client responds within an hour: “Looks great, let’s book it!”

Now what?

You need to:

• Generate a contract (where’s the template?)
• Get deposit payment (send invoice manually)
• Add event to calendar
• Calculate ingredients needed (50 people × recipes…)
• Add ingredients to next supplier order (Sysco order is… tomorrow? Did you miss the cutoff?)
• Adjust schedule (need +2 prep cooks Wednesday, +1 driver Thursday)
• Create prep list (what needs to be made Wednesday vs. Thursday morning?)
• Coordinate delivery (who’s driving? What time? Which vehicle? Do we have enough catering pans?)

It’s 4:23 PM. You’ve been working on this for 36 minutes and you’re only halfway done. And you still need to, you know, run dinner service tonight.

This is why restaurants love catering revenue but hate catering logistics.

The Tool Comparison: Why Nothing Solves This

Let’s compare what exists:

Catering-Specific Software (CaterZen, Tripleseat, Curate)

What they do well:

• Quote generation
• Contract management
• Payment processing
• Calendar management
• Customer communication

What they DON’T do:

• Integrate with your POS/inventory system
• Auto-generate kitchen prep schedules
• Trigger staff scheduling adjustments
• Create supplier order lists
• Coordinate delivery logistics

The gap: They treat catering as a sales problem (book the event, get paid) but ignore the operations problem (actually execute the event without chaos).

Restaurant POS Systems (Toast, Square)

What they do well:

• Regular service transactions
• Inventory tracking
• Staff management
• Sales reporting

What they DON’T do:

• Handle catering quotes/contracts
• Manage multi-day prep schedules
• Track off-premise delivery
• Separate catering revenue/costs from regular service

The gap: They’re built for in-restaurant service, not events that require advance prep, off-site delivery, and guaranteed headcounts.

Project Management Tools (Asana, Monday, Trello)

What they do well:

• Task lists
• Team collaboration
• Deadline tracking

What they DON’T do:

• Understand restaurant operations
• Auto-calculate ingredient quantities from headcount
• Integrate with POS, scheduling, or ordering systems
• Generate prep schedules based on menu complexity

The gap: They’re generic task managers that require you to manually create every step of the catering workflow for every event.

Before: The Catering Coordination Nightmare

Let me walk you through what happens without automation:

Day 0 (Booking Day):

• Customer inquiry arrives via email
• Manager manually creates quote (30-45 minutes)
• Client accepts
• Manager creates contract, sends for signature (20 minutes)
• Manager sends invoice for deposit (10 minutes)
• Total time: 60-75 minutes

Day -5 (One week before event):

• Manager reviews upcoming catering events
• Calculates ingredients needed
• Adds to supplier order… if they remember
• Common failure mode: Order goes out without catering ingredients, manager has to do emergency shopping at Costco

Day -3 (Three days before event):

• Manager creates prep schedule
• Writes prep list on whiteboard
• Hopes prep cooks see it and understand it
• Common failure mode: Prep list is ambiguous (“make pasta sauce”), prep cook doesn’t know quantity, makes too little or too much

Day -1 (Day before event):

• Manager checks prep progress
• Discovers half the prep wasn’t done because prep cook “wasn’t sure”
• Manager and staff stay late finishing prep
• Common failure mode: Prep runs late, food quality suffers from rushed preparation

Day 0 (Event day):

• Manager realizes they forgot to schedule delivery driver
• Manager personally delivers food, missing lunch service at restaurant
• Arrives at venue, realizes they forgot serving utensils
• Client is happy with food but service execution was sloppy
• Common failure mode: Food is great, logistics are terrible, client doesn’t rebook

Post-event:

• Manager forgets to invoice for final headcount adjustment (was quoted for 50, actual was 58)
• Loses $360 in revenue
• Never calculates actual food cost for event, doesn’t know if it was profitable

Total manager time per event: 4-6 hours spread across a week, plus the mental load of remembering all the details.

The Workflow Gap Nobody Fills

Here’s the fundamental problem: Catering is a multi-day, multi-system workflow, but every tool treats it as a single-system problem.

The ideal catering workflow looks like this:

1. Sales & Booking (CaterZen, Tripleseat) → Customer accepts quote, signs contract, pays deposit
2. Kitchen Production (Your kitchen systems) → Prep schedule generated, tasks assigned, progress tracked
3. Purchasing (MarketMan, supplier portals) → Ingredients calculated, added to orders
4. Staffing (7shifts, Deputy) → Schedule adjusted for prep + delivery + setup
5. Delivery & Execution (Logistics coordination) → Equipment checklist, delivery route, timing
6. Post-Event (Invoicing, cost analysis) → Final invoice, profit margin calculation, customer follow-up

No single tool handles all 6 steps. So restaurants manually coordinate between systems, and things fall through the cracks.

The Automation That Actually Works

What you need isn’t a better catering software. You need workflow orchestration that connects your existing tools:

Step 1: Quote to Booking (Automated)

Customer inquiry arrives:

• System detects catering inquiry keywords (“event,” “catering,” “50 people”)
• Auto-generates quote from templates (adjusts for headcount, menu selection)
• Sends quote with “Accept Quote” button

Customer accepts:

• Generates contract auto-filled with event details
• Sends for e-signature
• Creates invoice for deposit (50% upfront)
• Adds event to shared calendar
• Triggers next steps in workflow

Time savings: Quote creation 45 min → 5 min. Contract/invoice 30 min → automated.

Step 2: Kitchen Production Scheduling (Automated)

Event booking confirmed:

• System analyzes menu items + headcount
• Generates multi-day prep schedule:
  • 3 days before: Prep sauces, marinades (items that hold well)
  • 1 day before: Cook proteins, roast vegetables (items that reheat well)
  • Day-of: Final assembly, heating, plating
• Creates task list with specific quantities: “Prep 12 lbs marinara sauce (recipe #47), 8 lbs pesto (recipe #22)”
• Assigns tasks to prep cook schedule
• Sends Slack notification: “Catering event Thursday requires prep Wed 2pm-6pm. Tasks assigned.”

Time savings: Prep planning 60 min → automated. Coordination 30 min → automated.

Step 3: Ingredient Ordering (Automated)

Prep schedule created:

• System calculates ingredients from recipes × quantities
• Example: 50 people × Chicken Marsala (8oz chicken, 2oz mushrooms, 1oz butter per person) = 25 lbs chicken, 6.5 lbs mushrooms, 3 lbs butter
• Checks current inventory (if you track it)
• Adds needed quantities to next supplier order
• Flags if order cutoff has passed: “Alert: Sysco order already placed. Need emergency Costco run for chicken (25 lbs).”

Time savings: Ingredient calculation 45 min → automated. Ordering 20 min → automated.

Step 4: Staff Scheduling (Automated)

Event size analyzed:

• 50 people = moderate event
• System suggests: “+2 prep cooks Wednesday 2pm-6pm, +1 delivery driver Thursday 10am-1pm”
• Creates schedule change suggestions in 7shifts
• Manager approves with one click
• Staff receive shift notifications automatically

Time savings: Schedule adjustments 30 min → 2 min.

Step 5: Delivery Coordination (Automated)

24 hours before event:

• System generates delivery checklist:
  • Address: [Client location from booking]
  • Delivery time: 11:30am (30 min before event start)
  • Equipment needed: 6 full-size catering pans with lids, 3 chafing dishes, serving utensils for 6 items
  • Food items: [List of what’s being delivered]
  • Setup instructions: [From booking notes]
• Checklist sent to delivery driver via Slack/SMS
• Driver confirms receipt

Time savings: Delivery coordination 20 min → automated.

Step 6: Post-Event Follow-Up (Automated)

Event day +1:

• System checks if final headcount adjustment needed
• If actual headcount differs from quoted: auto-generate adjustment invoice
• Send thank-you email to client with request for feedback/testimonial
• Calculate actual food cost (if inventory is tracked): compare ingredient cost to revenue, calculate margin
• Log event profitability for future pricing decisions

Time savings: Post-event admin 30 min → 5 min.

The Small Restaurant Catering Playbook

If you’re doing 2-4 catering events per month, you don’t need enterprise catering software. You need lightweight workflow automation:

Minimum viable catering automation:

1. Email-to-calendar booking:

   • Catering inquiries forwarded to specific email address
   • System detects headcount, date, menu preferences
   • Auto-generates quote
   • Accepted quote → adds to calendar, creates prep reminders

2. Prep schedule templates:

   • 3-4 standard menus (Italian, BBQ, Mexican, etc.)
   • Pre-built prep schedules for each menu at different headcounts
   • Booking triggers template selection: “50 people Italian → Load prep schedule template #3”

3. Ingredient multiplier:

   • Simple recipes with per-person quantities
   • System multiplies by headcount
   • Outputs shopping list
   • Manager manually adds to Sysco order (or system auto-adds if integrated)

4. Delivery checklist generator:

   • Standard template (address, time, equipment, food items)
   • Auto-filled from booking details
   • Sent to driver 24 hours ahead

Cost: Can be built with Neudash + existing tools for $0-100/month

Time savings: 4-6 hours per event → 30-60 minutes

ROI: If you do 3 events/month, save 10-15 hours monthly = $300-450/month in manager time. Break even immediately.

The Reality Check: What This Won’t Fix

Catering automation makes coordination seamless. It doesn’t fix:

• Poor recipes: If your Chicken Marsala recipe doesn’t scale well or doesn’t hold/reheat properly, automation won’t save you. Test recipes at catering scale before offering them.

• Unrealistic capacity: If your kitchen can handle 30 covers for regular service but you book a 150-person catering event, you’ll be underwater regardless of automation. Know your limits.

• Quality shortcuts: Automation optimizes logistics, but if you’re using lower-quality ingredients for catering to hit a price point, customers will notice.

• Delivery mishaps: The checklist ensures the driver knows what to bring, but it can’t prevent traffic, vehicle breakdowns, or incorrect venue addresses. Build buffer time into delivery schedules.

Automation optimizes execution of a well-designed catering operation. It can’t compensate for a fundamentally broken catering model.

Getting Started

You don’t need to automate everything at once. Start with the highest-impact workflow:

Week 1: Email inquiry → Auto-generate quote. This alone saves 30-45 min per inquiry and makes you respond faster (which increases booking rate).

Week 2: Accepted quote → Auto-generate contract + deposit invoice. Saves another 30 min and ensures you don’t forget the deposit.

Week 3: Booking confirmed → Auto-generate prep schedule. This is where the real time savings and quality improvement happen.

Week 4: Prep schedule → Auto-calculate ingredients. Prevents the “oh shit, we forgot to order chicken” panic.

Month 2: Add staff scheduling and delivery coordination.

By month 2, you’ve automated 80% of catering coordination. Each event takes 30-60 min of manager time instead of 4-6 hours.

And you’ll actually know if catering is profitable, because you’re tracking costs and margins instead of guessing.

The Bottom Line

Catering can be 15-30% of your revenue with 35-45% margins—significantly better than regular service. But only if you actually execute events profitably.

The gap between “Can you do 50 people?” and successfully delivering a great event is filled with coordination tasks that automation handles better than humans:

• Calculating ingredient quantities
• Triggering prep schedules
• Ensuring staff coverage
• Generating delivery checklists
• Invoicing adjustments

Stop treating catering as a side business you coordinate manually. Build the workflows that make it a profit center.