Starting up a new leg of my catering business & Im trying to work out pricing. I've been doing the Cappuccino & Espresso bar catering & smoothie bar catering for years but never has that involved brewed coffee. Just the use of an espresso machine & doing made to order drinks (which might include americanos for the "regular" coffee drinkers). But now Im starting to promote to alot more businesses & Im getting interest in just doing regular brewed coffees for breakfasts & I have no idea how to price this out! Whats the norm? I know its going to be different between my city & your city but whats a good starting point? I've known food caterers to charge upwards of 3.00 a person to just have coffee service available during a wedding reception (which is sad because they could actually get more for badly brewed folgers coffee at a larger wedding than I might be getting for a full blown cappuccino bar!) Generally these corporate breakfasts are for larger groups (350 or more alot of times) so its not as simple as just having a single cambro or even those coffee to go cardboard boxes but more along the lines of having 5 or 6 cambros plus some fancy coffee service urns. So, what are those of you that offer brewed coffee service charging? Is it a flat rate per person like 2.00 or is it a tiered system so the price per person might drop the bigger the group is? My cappuccino bar pricing is tiered so if you call & want a cappuccino bar for 60 people its going to be much higher per person than if its for 200 people.
Also what are you guys doing for smoothie bar pricing on larger groups? I've got the smaller (250 or smaller) pricing set but I had someone call me today for a smoothie bar for 1500 people (WooHoo!). I would say I average 3 to 4.50 per person on a smoothie bar for under 250 people but I doubt I'll be chargin 4.50 per person for 1500 people (and even 3.00 per person is going to get on up there) but I also know what my cost is per smoothie & I cant go down much lower.
Thanks for the insite.
Mitch
Bella Caffe
Memphis, TN
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