01quotes
Proposals that close
Build a per-person quote from your real menu costs in minutes, send a link, and get an e-signature and deposit — not a week of email ping-pong around a PDF.
Catering software · Early access
Catering software for people who'd rather be cooking.
PerPlate is catering management software for independent caterers — quotes, banquet event orders, recipe costing, the event calendar, and invoicing in one place. Not in nine spreadsheets. Not in a desktop program older than your sous chef.
You didn't start a catering company to babysit spreadsheets.
Tonight's service, currently
The quotewedding_quote_v14_FINAL_final.xlsx
The BEOretyped three times, wrong twice
The recipe costslast updated when brisket was cheap
The calendara whiteboard, a group text, a prayer
The invoiceSunday, 11:48 PM
Every caterer we talk to runs some version of this stack. It works — until the headcount changes the week of the event and three documents quietly disagree about how much food to make.
The tasting menu
Six courses · What PerPlate does
02beos
BEOs that write themselves
The banquet event order generates straight from the accepted quote. Change the headcount once and the kitchen sheet, pack list, and invoice all update together.
03costing
Recipe & menu costing
Cost recipes down to the ounce, see margin per menu and per event, and reprice in seconds when your protein supplier does protein supplier things.
04calendar
One calendar, every event
Tastings, drop-offs, weddings, staff assignments — one timeline for the whole operation. No more double-booked Saturdays discovered on Friday.
05money
Invoices, deposits & payments
Deposits collected at signing, balance reminders sent automatically, payments reconciled per event. Sunday night stops being invoice night.
06clients
A CRM that remembers
Every client's events, dietary notes, venue quirks, and favorite passed app — on file. Repeat business is the best business; treat it that way.
A brief history of your alternatives
The “industry standard” catering software was founded in 1991.
Caterease shipped before the web browser. Total Party Planner is from 1997. They were great — for their time. But you shouldn't need a Windows install, a training week, and a per-module price sheet to send a quote for forty box lunches.
Legacy suites
- Built1991–1997
- Lives ona desktop in the office
- Pricingper module, per seat
- Learning curvemeasured in weeks
PerPlate
- Built2026, for 2026
- Lives onbrowser + your phone
- Pricingone flat rate
- Learning curvean afternoon
While you wait — take the templates.
We're building PerPlate in the open, and the paperwork shouldn't wait. These free catering templates and tools are yours — no software required.
Free · № 01
Free BEO template
A banquet event order your kitchen and service staff can actually run from.
Get it →
Free · № 02
Free Catering contract template
Deposits, headcount cutoffs, cancellation terms — the clauses that save events.
Get it →
Free · № 03
Free Catering invoice template
A clean invoice with deposit tracking, service charge, and tax that adds itself up.
Get it →
Free · № 04
Free Catering quote template
A per-person quote that turns into a proposal clients say yes to.
Get it →
Free · № 05
Catering pricing calculator
Food, labor, rentals, overhead, margin — get a defensible per-person price.
Open calculator →
Questions from the kitchen
What is catering management software?
Catering management software keeps every part of a catering business in one system: leads and inquiries, quotes and proposals, banquet event orders (BEOs), menu and recipe costing, the event calendar, staffing notes, invoices, and payments. Instead of a folder of spreadsheets and a desktop program from the 90s, everything about an event lives in one place that your whole team can see.
What is the best catering software for a small business?
Most options force a trade-off: legacy suites like Caterease (founded 1991) and Total Party Planner (1997) are deep but dated and desktop-bound, while generic tools like Square or HoneyBook aren't built around BEOs and per-person pricing. PerPlate is being built specifically for independent caterers — quote → BEO → invoice in one flow, priced flat for small teams. Join the waitlist and judge it against anything.
Does PerPlate replace Caterease or Total Party Planner?
That's the plan. PerPlate covers the same core workflow — proposals, BEOs, event calendar, costing, invoicing — in a modern browser app that works on your phone at the venue. When early access opens we'll include free, hands-on migration help for caterers moving off legacy software.
Is there free catering software?
Truly free catering software is rare — most 'free' options are payment processors that monetize elsewhere, or trials. PerPlate will be free while in beta for waitlist members, and our free catering templates (BEO, contract, invoice, quote) and the catering pricing calculator are free forever, no software required.
When does PerPlate launch and what will it cost?
Early access opens to the waitlist in late 2026, in signup order. Beta users pay nothing and get a founding-member price when we launch — one flat monthly rate, no per-event fees, no per-module add-ons, no contracts.
Last call
Get out of the spreadsheet. Back into the kitchen.
Join the waitlist for early access — free during beta, founding-member pricing at launch, and migration help off whatever you're running now. Even if it's seventeen tabs named “FINAL”.