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A hotel earns from two very different things: rooms and food service. This article is about the second one only, breakfast, meeting packages, and group dinners, not room revenue, which is a completely different business with completely different margins. Here's […]

A catering business works on location at the client's site, without its own premises or a fixed pitch. That saves fixed costs, but makes transport, equipment and staff planning all the more important for your margin. In this article you'll […]

Margin slips away faster in a restaurant than in other forms of catering: higher service staff costs, higher rent, and a menu that isn't always properly costed out. Here's what a healthy profit margin looks like for a restaurant, which […]

An event venue earns in two ways: renting out the space, and food and drink. Those two have very different margins. This article covers what a healthy profit margin looks like for an event venue, which costs shape it, and […]

A food truck skips the rent, but fuel, pitch fees and vehicle upkeep take a bite instead. Here's what a healthy profit margin looks like for a food truck, which costs shape it, and how to work out your own. […]

Stock, supplier orders, food cost and the staff rota: in many restaurants, it all lives in separate spreadsheets that nobody updates consistently. As long as things run smoothly, that goes unnoticed, but on a busy night you immediately feel what […]

A restaurant rota is never really finished, because last week's rush doesn't tell you everything about next week. Scheduling too many staff wastes money on wages, scheduling too few costs you tables, waiting time and frustrated guests. In this article […]

A dish that's sold well on your menu for years can still cost you money instead of making it, if the food cost has never been recalculated. On a fixed menu you don't work out the margin once for a […]

Order slips on a notepad, stock you keep track of in your head, a whiteboard with this week's rota: plenty of hospitality businesses still run largely on paper and memory. That works, until it doesn't: a busy Friday night, a […]

You probably already know that switching to catering software would save you time, cut down on mistakes and give you a clearer overview. In practice, though, little changes, not because the software isn't good enough, but because the daily rush […]

Ghost kitchen, cloud kitchen, dark kitchen: different names for the same idea, a kitchen built to cook for delivery and pickup only, with no dining room attached. For caterers weighing whether the model fits their business, here's what a ghost […]

Every quote you send and every event you cater generates customer information, but at many catering businesses that knowledge disappears into scattered emails and the owner's memory. A customer database that you keep up properly means you recognise repeat clients, […]

In many catering businesses, purchasing still runs on habit: call the same supplier, order by gut feel, and only find out afterwards what's left over. That costs you money in two directions, because you buy too much for one event […]

Contract catering gets lumped in with event catering so often that many people assume it's just a bigger, longer version of the same thing. It isn't. Where event catering delivers a single occasion, contract catering means running food service at […]

Vegan and vegetarian requests used to be a single line on a booking form that caterers handled with an afterthought salad. That's changed: guests now expect a plant-based option that's as considered as everything else on the menu, and getting […]

Afternoon tea catering looks simple on the surface, a few sandwiches, some scones, a pot of tea, but getting the details right is what separates a memorable afternoon tea from a disappointing one. Timing matters more than with most catering […]

During a busy catering day, it's not the recipe but the organisation in the kitchen that decides whether everything goes out the door on time. A kitchen with clear positions, where everyone knows their role, stays calm even under pressure, […]

A summer BBQ is often the easiest event for a client to book, and one of the trickiest for you to plan properly. You're cooking outdoors, at the mercy of the weather, with live grilling happening right in front of […]

A dish that looks profitable on the menu can quietly lose you money if the food cost behind it was never properly worked out. Food cost is the percentage of what you charge that goes straight back into ingredients, and […]

One bad allergic reaction, one van break-in, one slip on a wet marquee floor, and a single uninsured incident can undo months of profit. Catering insurance isn't one product though, it's a stack of different covers, and not every caterer […]

It's one of the first questions a client asks, and one of the easiest to get wrong: how many canapes does everyone actually need? Too few and the room feels stingy, too many and you've cooked (and bought) for nothing. […]