Catering Software

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Decided to join the forum when I came across this thread while doing some research.  I am a software developer (and food enthusiast) specializing in small business management applications. 

I recently had a friend of mine suggest looking into doing something for the food service market.  I would love to develop something of use for chefs / caterers, but honestly, I don't currently know enough about the business to feel I could really add any value.

If anyone here feels like there is a need for some fresh software, I would love to open up a dialogue with you, assuming I'm not violating the forum rules in any way by asking.

I'd much rather work on something that I know helps you in some specific ways than to spend a bunch of time building something with my limited knowledge of your needs & desires.

Again, my focus is on small businesses and specific markets.  I'd much rather develop a small & elegant application that suits a specific market (i.e catering, personal chefs, etc…) than to try and build a large enterprise application that tries to be all things to all people.

If this sounds good to you, I'll go ahead and start a new thread where we can start talking details.

P.S. I don't really do desktop software, so anything I would make has to be web-based or mobile (iPhone / iPad).

- Michael

Hi i would love to talk to you about this. i really need something simple that has a few functions i have tried many of the programs but there just to much info required for all those i need some thing for my office and not for my kitchen. example i have to make chicken tikka for 300 people today and then i have to make chicken butter masala for 50 people because we right now type everything manually and don't have any way of looking at all the orders. i would be nice if i can click on a date and then see my orders that instead of making 2 items my sales guys can try to sell something that I'm already making. the main problem is that we are in the Indian food market and there are hundreds of dishes. literally. 
 

please your help would be greatly appreciated and maybe we can some with a simple app that will make people happy. 

Hi i would love to talk to you about this. i really need something simple that has a few functions i have tried many of the programs but there just to much info required for all those i need some thing for my office and not for my kitchen. example i have to make chicken tikka for 300 people today and then i have to make chicken butter masala for 50 people because we right now type everything manually and don't have any way of looking at all the orders. i would be nice if i can click on a date and then see my orders that instead of making 2 items my sales guys can try to sell something that I'm already making. the main problem is that we are in the Indian food market and there are hundreds of dishes. literally. 
 

please your help would be greatly appreciated and maybe we can some with a simple app that will make people happy. 

For your restaurant if you want to integrate it to your POS you will need to start from the POS side and find one with a catering module, if there is one.

As far as a standardized piece of software there are a number out there.  The top dog in the field is caterease.  One that is friendlier to less computer savvy is totalpartyplanner from there is a wide range of software available.  I would NOT suggest writing one from scratch or engaging a programmer.  Event catering software has so many components that it takes awhile to figure out what you need.  The two I suggested have it figured out and are priced well for the market.  There are others, and maybe better ones, but these tow are great places to start.

Has anyone got any software recommendations then?

http://www.capitalcooking.co.uk/capital-cooking-london.asp

This topic tends to repeat itself every few months or so.  I suggest looking at previous threads.

We use Caterease, as JBARH mentioned, and it's incredibly powerful and we love it.  They are also open to updating programming for specific needs.

CHEFDAVE Did you not see my post on this topic?