[BrooklynChef]

Hi all,

The company I own, Pete's Eats, is a small Brooklyn, based off-premises catering company. We also do in-home instructional cooking parties as well as private lessons. We have been in business for 3 going on 4 years, and have been growing quite steadily. I have slated 2008 to be my year of significant growth. Since the beginning, I have not been using any catering software, but I have done a pretty decent job controlling food cost and keeping track of my inventory. As I grow though (we are still small) I am going to need to keep more detailed track down to the gram with controlling every aspect of my catering, and I am looking at catering software applications. I looked at Caterease and a few others. Caterease (from the demo) seems to be the most comprehensive one, but I could use some feed back. The cost for these programs is pretty high, over $3 grand for the caterease pro, and I just want to be absolutely sure before I make a purchase committing to anything. Any ideas?

[alongcame]

I wouldnt pay a cent for catering software, 3000, crap!!

Buy a 6 pack, grab a lawn chair, write up some formulas in excel, you're good to go. Or if you have some software friends like me, get them to write a whole program for you for free ..

But honestly, I do all my work on excel and in my head, maybe I am just good with numbers and tracking I dont really know. Excel has no frills, its dirt cheap, easily modifiable and used by the biggest of corporations because of the simplistic features and advanced.

I suggest spending some timing becoming familiar, it might save you thousand, but this is just me.

[catering-utah]

Are you running Windows or OS X? I've been looking for catering and event planning software as well...

[Nose Bag]

Check out 'Total Party Planner' software - you should be able to google for that. We received a demo cd for a 30 day trial, then it's $1200 - 1400 if you wish to purchase. Very rich features based on core aspects of catering like clients, venues, staff, foodcosts, invoicing etc.

[Shannon7175]

Have you checked out Cheftec? It doesn't apply specifically to catering, but is GREAT for food costs. Cost are probably similar, but all yu do is enter food vendor incoices and recipes and it calculates food cost....very MAJOR! hopefully theis is helpfull

[David Jones]

We spent almost $4000 on our first package of Caterease about two years ago. At the time, $4000 was just as easily $4 million dollars - we had nothing. If we hadn';t begged, borrowed and stolen to buy it, we would still be a $50,000 a year caterer. We've grown to almost a million, and we still rely on CE.

It is NOT the easiest software to learn, but the payoff is there.

dj

[JJBBQGUY]

We use Mastercooks (20.00) and a few excel for invoices and contracts. Need any help let me know.

[soupcowb]

Caterease is the best catering/event software program on the market. We did dozens on hours of research on all of the programs available, and Caterease is by far the most comprehensize, user-friendly, and powerful. We used to use multiple programs like Word, Excel, and Outlook to run our business; now Caterease does everything. Not only does Caterease streamline and centralize your business, but it is a crucial tool when trying to expand and grow. Caterease it the way to go.

[David Jones]

We have been able to pass info between Caterease and our Microsoft Office "templates". We them make them into PDFs so any Mac or PC user can read but not manipulate.

Info passes to Excel just as easily. We use the support line often to get things the way we want them. Support is worth the price.

[Fel3232]

Use Excel along with pre-made templates, it is the most economical way
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