Catering Events

Creating a Catering Event

The Catering Wizard enables you to plan a catering event based on menu and cost. This feature allows you to maximize your profits for each event. You can determine menus, pricing strategy and even print shopping lists, prep sheets and menu confirmations.

This window can be used for Catering events, classroom events, banquets and even employee meals.  The window is for planning and once the event is complete, you can extract stock to register the sales and extract the inventory.

Once the event is complete, you can extract the stock from inventory and print out a summary of the event.

To create a catering event

Click Catering  from the Main Menu Toolbar

The Catering events calendar appears. Double click on any event to open

To create a new event, click New

The window is broken into 4 parts:

Catering Core Information

Field

Details

Description

Enter a unique description for this event. Try to make it something that will be easy to identify later.

Event location

The location of the event E.g. Main Banquet Hall

Customer (optional)

Choose the customer the event is for.  To add customers see Adding New Customers

Sales Group

Enter the sales group that this event will appear in on the sales mix reports. One tip is to add a sales group called Catering. This will keep all catering events together in your reports for easy evaluation.

 

Quote Date

The date that the quote was given.

Instructions

Enter in any further details regarding the event. For example, “need a podium,” “deliver side door,” “white table cloths,” etc. Any special instructions for the event.

Event Date

This is the expected date of the event. The date will most likely be in the future as this window is designed to help you plan catering events.

Event Time

The start time of the event.

Serve At

The time at which the food will be served.

Duration

The estimated time of the entire event. This is a great tool if you are booking rooms.  Optimum Control will alert you if the location you are scheduling the event for is being used at that time.  Especially handy when booking sporting event suites.

Tax Group

Assign a tax group to be applied to the pricing calculations for this event.

Enter the Guests for the event.

1.  Indicate the guests for the event and how many.  You will need to detail guests in the Setup section to have them available

2.  Click Settings  from Main Menu

3.  Choose Setup

4.  Select Guests 

5.  Click Add, indicate the Guest name, Selling price and POS ID (Optional) and POS Description (optional).  The POS information is ONLY needed if you want Optimum Control to ignore these items in the POS Import. 

TIP:  Do not ignore the POS ID so that when sales are imported to Optimum Control the Catering Sales entered into the POS will be listed as invalid (pending) sales.  This way you can cross reference the amount to the catering wizard and click Extract Stock.  This will extract the Sales and then you can delete the pending sales.

To Add a guest, click Add the Guest Icon  on the Catering Toolbar.

Select the Guest Type (if you have more than one)

Field

Details

Guest Description

Indicate from the list of entered Guests

Amount

Indicate the number of people coming to the event

Price

Enter the price you want to charge per Guest

Total

This price is calculated by multiplying the number of guests by the Price.  You can edit this price if necessary.

 

Catering Ingredients

Add Menu products, Prep recipes and even Inventory Items to build the event. If choosing prep and inventory item type ingredients you can choose whichever units of measure you want to use from the drop down.

NOTE:  Be careful when adding Inventory Items and Preps as the selling price that is listed in the window is COST PRICE only. You can override this price if you are calculating by selling price.

Adding Products – Add completed recipes to the event. The Retail Price of the menu product as entered into Optimum Control will appear and allow you to override if you wish.

Adding Items and Prep recipes. – Sometimes you will plan to add a few loaves of bread to an event or perhaps just take along a pan of chicken or Meatloaf. Indicate how much you want to take with you (the drop-down list will allow you to add both recipe units and package units of items only).

Detail the amounts for each item, prep or product

 

Cost Calculation Types

 

Costing Type

Details

Cost Percentage

Calculates the selling price and total cost based on your desired cost of sales.  Indicate the cost percentage or Margin %. Note the recalculation each time you change the percentage

Guest Price

Calculates the selling price based on guest price

Selling Price

This method uses the retail selling price (or calculated markup price in the item and prep type ingredients

 

Catering Calculation Results – Use each costing type as you require to maximize profitability for the event.  The results will let you make decisions that will help make the pricing proper for the event and detail your profitability.

 

Field

Details

Tax Group

Choose the tax group if applicable

Price Per guest

Displays the price per guest to quote

Selling Price with Tax

Calculated total including tax

Cost per Guest

The cost of the catering event divided by the number of guests

Selling Price

Total Selling price for the event

Selling Price with Tax

The selling price including tax

Total Cost

The cost of the event

Net Profit

The Total Sales less the cost

Gratuity %

Add a gratuity or some sort of service charge if necessary

Total Gratuity

The total gratuity amount

Grand Totals

To total of the selling price plus gratuity

 

Catering Reports – to print reports click Print from the Catering Toolbar

 

Report

Details

Catering Contract

Print a report confirming the customer and menu for the event

Shopping List

Print a listing of required stock for the event

Prep Sheet

A listing of the preps required and the recipes to complete the preps

 

To complete the Catering Sales click Extract from the Catering Toolbar, this will extract the stock required for the event from inventory and register the sales.  These sales will appear in the catering reports along with the Sales mix reports.