Pricing is the skill no culinary school teaches you. You can execute a flawless six-course tasting menu, manage a complex dietary matrix, and plate like a Michelin-starred kitchen — but if you can't price the job confidently, you'll work hard for very little. Worse, you'll quote blind, win the work anyway, and only discover the margin was razor-thin when you're washing up at midnight.

This guide gives you a repeatable framework. Use it every time you quote a dinner party and you'll never guess at a number again.

Step 1: Calculate your ingredient cost

Start with a detailed menu. For every dish — starter, main, dessert, canapes, sides — list every ingredient you'll need, the quantity required for the number of covers, and the price per unit from your usual supplier.

Add these up to get your raw ingredient cost. Then apply a wastage buffer of 10–15%. Ingredients go wrong. Portions run over. Stock gets damaged in transit. The buffer accounts for real-world kitchen conditions, not textbook ones.

Ingredient cost = sum of all ingredient prices
Wastage buffer = ingredient cost × 0.12 (12%)
Total food cost = ingredient cost + wastage buffer

A useful benchmark: your food cost should typically represent 28–35% of your total quote. If it's higher, either your margin is too thin or your prices are too low. If it's much lower, you may be charging well — or you've missed something.

Tip: Yield, our finance app for private chefs, calculates food cost percentage automatically as you add ingredients. You can also scan your supplier receipt with the camera to import line items instantly — no typing required.

Step 2: Add your time

Your time is the most commonly underpriced element of any dinner party quote. There are typically three time buckets to account for:

  • Preparation time — the hours you spend prepping before the event, whether at home or on-site. For a six-course dinner for eight, this is rarely under three hours.
  • Travel time — the time spent getting to the client's venue and returning home. If the round trip takes two hours, that's two hours of your working day.
  • Service time — the hours you're on-site cooking, plating, and running the kitchen.

Add these together and multiply by your target hourly rate. What should your rate be? That depends on your experience, your market, and what you need to earn — but as a starting point, most established UK private chefs charge between £25 and £60 per hour for their labour. If you don't yet know your rate, set a floor based on what you'd need to earn annually divided by your realistic working hours.

Step 3: Calculate travel costs

Travel is a direct cost and should be passed on. For mileage in your own vehicle, HMRC's approved rate is £0.45 per mile for the first 10,000 miles per year. This covers fuel, wear and tear, and insurance — use it as your baseline.

If you're using public transport, the cost is simply your ticket price. If the job requires an overnight stay, add accommodation. Don't absorb these costs — they erode your margin without adding value to the client.

Mileage cost = total miles × £0.45
Travel cost = mileage cost + any public transport / accommodation

Step 4: Overhead and equipment

If you're bringing specialist equipment — a water bath, a cream whipper, your own knives and boards — there's a cost to that equipment being used, maintained, and eventually replaced. Most private chefs don't itemise this explicitly, but a flat equipment and overhead charge of 5–8% of the total food cost is a reasonable way to account for it without adding complexity to the quote.

If you use a consumables kit (disposable piping bags, cling film, kitchen paper, labels), factor in a small flat amount — typically £10–20 per job.

Step 5: Your margin

Once you have all your costs — food, labour, travel, overheads — add them together to get your total cost base. Your quote should sit above this by your desired profit margin.

A margin of 20–30% above your cost base is a reasonable target for most private chefs. This isn't profit you're extracting from the client — it's the buffer that covers the unpaid hours around every job: admin, recipe development, client correspondence, equipment sourcing, and the cost of running a business.

Total cost = food cost + labour + travel + overheads
Target quote = total cost ÷ (1 − margin%)
Example at 25% margin = total cost ÷ 0.75
Add VAT at 20% if you are VAT-registered

Step 6: Writing the quote your client will say yes to

The number matters, but so does how you present it. A well-structured quote communicates professionalism and justifies the investment. At a minimum, your quote should include:

  • The event date, location, and number of covers
  • A full menu breakdown — courses, dishes, and any dietary accommodations
  • A clear line-by-line cost breakdown: catering fee, travel, any extras (staffing, equipment hire)
  • Your deposit requirement (typically 25–50%) and due date
  • Your balance due date (usually the week before the event)
  • Your bank details or payment instructions
  • Your cancellation terms

Clients who receive a detailed, professional quote are more likely to accept it, less likely to haggle, and more likely to rebook. A rough estimate or a verbal number does the opposite.

Real numbers, every time: The calculation above is exactly what Yield does automatically — add your ingredients, set your hours and mileage, and it shows you the food cost %, effective hourly rate, and suggested quote price in real time. You can then send a branded PDF quote directly to the client from the app, with a deposit invoice auto-generated on acceptance.

One final rule

Never quote a number you haven't calculated. Gut-feel pricing is how private chefs end up working for £8 an hour at a dinner party they spent three days preparing. Run the numbers every time — even if the result confirms your instinct, you'll quote with confidence and your clients will feel it.