Guides
A ghost kitchen quote template: fields and pricing formulas
Use a ghost kitchen quote template with fill-in fields and three pricing formulas for group drops, event orders, and co-packing—without invented prices.
What to take away
- A delivery kitchen quotes when it sells outside the appgroup and office drops, event orders, and production for another brand. Those quotes need fields an app order never shows.
- The template below lists the fields; the pricing examples are structures in variables, because any figure here would be someone else's kitchen.
- Staging, delivery, and packaging for volume are separate lines. Folding them into a per-head price is how group work loses money.
- Every quote carries an expiry and a change rule, because ingredient costs and your peak capacity move.
- A quote is a claim about what will arrive; make it a true one.
Most of a ghost kitchen's revenue never involves a quote. The exceptions arrive by email: an office wants lunch for a team every Thursday, a family wants a delivered spread for an event, a neighboring brand wants you to produce a sauce or a component.
That work is often the best-contributing work the kitchen does, because no platform commission applies. It is also where unpriced staging time and volume packaging turn a good week into a bad one. The template below is the fix.
Quote template fields
- Quote number[ ]; date prepared: [ ]; expiry date: [ ].
- Customer name[ ]; contact: [ ]; delivery address or pickup arrangement: [ ].
- Occasion[ ]; service time window: [ ]; earliest the food may leave the kitchen: [ ]; latest it may arrive: [ ].
- Headcount or unit count[ ]; minimum: [ ]; cutoff date for changes: [ ].
- Menu, item by item, with portion sizes and what each item ships in: [ ].
- Dietary and allergen notes as supplied by the customer: [ ]; what the kitchen can and cannot accommodate: [ ].
- Stagingwhether food is held hot or cold before dispatch: [ ]; for how long: [ ]; what that requires: [ ].
- Delivery or pickup method (your own transport, a platform's courier service, or the customer collecting): [ ].
- Setup[ ]; whether the kitchen's staff unpack and arrange, or the bags are handed over: [ ].
- Packaging and serving items included (containers, serving utensils, plates, napkins): [ ].
- Line pricingfood: [ ]; packaging: [ ]; delivery: [ ]; staging or labor: [ ]; setup: [ ]; any minimum order adjustment: [ ].
- Taxes and fees, as the state revenue department requires for this kind of sale: [ ].
- Deposit[ ]; balance: [ ]; payment method: [ ]; due dates: [ ].
- Change and cancellation rulewhat changes are allowed until: [ ]; what a late change costs: [ ].
- Acceptancesignature or written confirmation: [ ]; what it commits both sides to: [ ].
Pricing structures, in variables
The pricing and profit guide sets contribution per order; a quote is contribution per job. Three common structures:
Three pricing structures
Per-head drop
- Formula
- h × (F + K + Lp) + D + S
- Key variable
- headcount h
- Common mistake
- drop D and S into per-head then discount
- Required contribution
- add on top
Event spread
- Formula
- Σ(units × unit cost) + K + D + S + setup
- Key variable
- units per item
- Common mistake
- skip sealed-transit test at volume
- Required contribution
- add on top
Co-packing
- Formula
- batch ingredient + labor + packaging + displaced value
- Key variable
- batch size
- Common mistake
- ignore displaced peak orders
- Required contribution
- add on top
- Per-head drop. Price = h × (F + K + Lp) + D + S, where h is headcount, F food cost per head, K packaging per head, Lp portioning labor per head, D delivery cost for this trip, and S staging cost (the labor and hot-holding for the time between cooking and dispatch). Add the contribution you require per job on top. The mistake is dropping D and S into the per-head figure and then discounting the per-head figure.
- Event spread. Price = sum over items of (units × unit cost) + K + D + S + setup labor, plus required contribution. Volume containers must have passed a sealed-transit test at volume, which is a different test from the single-portion one.
- Co-packing or component production. Price = batch ingredient cost + batch labor at loaded rate + packaging + a share of the constrained-minute value the batch displaces at peak, plus required contribution. If the batch is made during your peak it costs you the orders it displaced; price that in or schedule it off-peak.
The required contribution per job is set by the same floor the break-even article derives: a job that does not clear the floor is a job you decline, however large the headcount.
The lines that lose money when omitted
- Staging. Food cooked for a noon drop and held from eleven is an hour of labor and hot-holding equipment, and it may raise food-safety questions with your health authority about holding times; ask them before quoting a long stage.
- Delivery. A platform courier on a large order, or your own vehicle and driver, is a real cost on every quote.
- Volume packaging. Trays, lids, and carriers are not the containers your app orders use, and they are bought for the job.
- Changes. A headcount that rises the day before is a re-order at short notice from a supplier who may substitute.
Truthfulness and records
A quote describes what will arrive; portion sizes, dietary claims, and delivery promises are claims. The Federal Trade Commission's advertising guidance for small business requires claims to be truthful and substantiated, and that applies to a quote as much as to a listing.
Keep the quote, the confirmation, and the invoice together. The Internal Revenue Service's page on what records a business should keep describes a system that clearly shows income with supporting documents, and quoted work is income the platform statements do not show.
Who prepares and approves
The person running the pass knows constrained minutes and staging capacity. The owner knows the required contribution. Both sign off on a quote above a size you set. Most failures come from a generous quote accepted by someone who did not know Thursday lunch would collide with the dinner peak.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' profile of food service managers puts budgets and customer issues in the manager's remit. Quoting sits between those two.
Where quoted work fits the plan
Quoted work is commission-free revenue, and it fills hours the app leaves empty. That is why the expansion and market guide treats office and event work as a format decision with its own gate.
Office-corridor radius types carry the weekday lunch demand that makes recurring drops possible, and the markets article compares radius types on that. The numbered sequence to price any of it is in the how-to article on pricing in this cluster.
Common questions
Why are there no example prices?
Because a per-head price for someone else's menu, in someone else's city, with someone else's delivery cost, would be an invented figure presented as guidance. The structures above take your numbers.
Should I discount for recurring office orders?
Only after D and S are on their own lines, so that the discount comes off contribution and not off the cost of getting there.
How long should a quote be valid?
Long enough for the customer to decide, short enough that ingredient costs and your peak capacity have not moved. Put the date on it.
Do I need a deposit?
For any job that requires buying ingredients or packaging you would not otherwise hold, a deposit sized to that outlay is ordinary practice. State it on the quote.
