Catering Business Plan for India: What a 500-Plate Wedding Really Earns.

Choose the rung you are starting on. Indian caterers usually climb in three steps. First a home kitchen under FSSAI Basic Registration, which Venura's FSSAI guide places below ₹12 lakh of annual turnover. Then a rented or shared commercial kitchen with hired equipment; Venura's catering start-up guide puts a boutique launch at roughly ₹5-8 lakh. Last, a central kitchen, at ₹12-20 lakh of capex for weddings of 1,000-plus guests: ₹5.5-8.5 lakh for equipment, ₹3-5 lakh for cold storage, ₹2.5-4.5 lakh for crockery and transport, and a lease deposit of ₹1.5-3 lakh. Do not sign the central-kitchen lease until peak-season bookings can pay its rent for two months. A kitchen you cannot fill is the most expensive way to feel established.

Cost the plate from the mandi, not from a rival's rate card. The sheet above builds the menu in 15 blocks, each one a grammage per guest multiplied by the day's rate. Paneer at 150 g a head is 75 kg, or ₹27,000 at ₹360 a kg. The seasonal vegetable line is 210 kg for ₹8,820. Add ₹24 a plate for drink, ice, water and disposables and food cost lands at ₹253.8 a plate. Divide by a 30% target and you get ₹846, which is why the quote reads ₹850. CATEROPS, an Indian catering-costing publisher, put food cost at 25-35% of price for premium service, 35-45% for mid-range and 45-55% for budget catering (December 2025). Costing at 30% is premium pricing. If your buyers compare rate cards, expect to live in the 40s and squeeze every other line.

Then count everything that is not grocery. Kitchen labour for two prep days and the event is ₹38,000. Eighteen agency stewards at ₹850 add ₹15,300, one per 28 guests, in line with the 25-30 guest ratio in Venura's start-up guide. Two counter cooks cost ₹7,000, four LPG cylinders ₹7,200, tempo trips ₹9,000, hired chafing dishes and breakage ₹12,000. Then come the lines people forget: a 10% wastage buffer (₹11,492), a 5% referral cut if a venue or planner brought the order (₹21,250), and 2% lost to discounts and balances that never arrive (₹8,500). Total direct cost: ₹2,56,659. What is left is ₹1,68,341, or 39.6% of the order. That is contribution, not profit. The rent is still unpaid.

Break-even is a monthly number. Fixed overheads for the central kitchen in this example are ₹60,000 rent, ₹1.2 lakh for a head cook and three assistants, ₹24,000 power and water, ₹50,000 owner's drawing, ₹10,000 depreciation, ₹15,000 for licences and accounts and ₹12,000 for marketing and tasting trials: ₹2,91,000 a month. Divide ₹2,91,000 by ₹1,68,341 and you get 1.73. Two orders of this size a month just to stand still. That sounds easy until you lay the year out against the wedding calendar.

Spread 36 orders over a year roughly the way weddings fall: 26 between November and February, 10 across the other eight months, none in July. Peak months clear ₹7,19,044 to ₹8,87,385 after overheads. A one-order month loses ₹1,22,659, and July loses the full ₹2,91,000. Add it up: ₹1.53 crore of revenue, ₹25,68,267 of net, a 16.8% margin. Yet if you begin April with no reserve, cumulative cash bottoms out at minus ₹7,35,956 in September. That is the number to arrange before you sign anything, and it is how a caterer can look rich in December and still be short in August. The workbook's Season Cash Flow sheet shows your own low point.

Cash leaves before the advance arrives. Before this event you spend about ₹1,64,609 on grocery, consumables, wastage stock, LPG and half the kitchen labour. A 25% advance is ₹1,06,250, so each order leaves you ₹58,359 out of pocket, and two orders in one peak week means about ₹1,16,718 of your own money. Ask for 40% (₹1,70,000) on peak dates and the gap disappears. GST also sits in your cost base. Independent outdoor caterers bill 5% GST with no input credit, per Venura's GST guide for caterers, so tax paid on crockery, LPG and equipment cannot be claimed back.

How it goes wrong (an example, not a client). You quote in June while tomato and onion are cheap. By November the grocery bill is 15% higher, which is ₹17,238 on this order. If that lifts every one of the 26 peak-season orders, you lose ₹4,48,178 and the year's margin falls from 16.8% to 13.9%. The short count is nastier. The client said 500 guests, 430 turn up, and you had cooked for 500. With no minimum-guarantee clause you bill 430 plates and lose ₹59,500 of revenue, 14% of the order, while the food is already made. Write the guaranteed count and the advance terms into the quote.

Small orders hide a trap. Change guests to 50 in the workbook and the lump-sum lines refuse to shrink with you: the tempo trip is still ₹9,000, which is 21% of a ₹42,500 order but only 2% of a ₹4,25,000 one. Home caterers who quote 50 guests at the same ₹850 plate price end up subsidising delivery. Set a minimum order value or a delivery charge, and cost each small order on its own copy of the sheet.