What a Website for a Catering Business Costs
A catering website costs EUR 900 to 1.500 as a step 02, or EUR 1.500 to 3.500 as a step 03 with a CMS and separate pages for weddings, corporate and private hire. Step 02 takes 2 to 3 weeks, step 03 takes 3 to 6 weeks, and a fixed quote follows scoping.
The thing that decides whether either one pays for itself is not the page count. It is what your enquiry form asks before it lets somebody press send. A one page site at step 01, EUR 600 to 900, with a form built properly, can do more for your diary than a seven page site whose form asks for name, email and message.
Why the form is the product
A catering enquiry is not a sale, it is the start of a quote. Until you know the date, the headcount, the venue and the service style, you cannot price anything, so every enquiry that arrives without those four facts starts a thread instead of a job.
You ask for the date. They reply when they reply. You ask about the venue and kitchen access. They reply. Somewhere in there they book the caterer who answered with a number. Each round trip is unpaid work and another chance for them to go cold, and none of it needed to happen: the questions are the same every time, so the form can ask them once, while the person is still on your site.
A form that asks real questions also filters. Somebody with twelve guests and a tiny budget stops halfway and does not send, which sounds like a loss and is not. What lands in your inbox is quotable, and you spend the evening writing quotes instead of asking for headcounts.
The fields that change your quote
| Field | Why it belongs there |
|---|---|
| Event date | Availability first. If you are already booked, nothing else matters and you can say so immediately. |
| Guest count | The main driver of food, staff, hire and transport. A range is easier to answer than an exact number nobody has yet. |
| Venue or postcode | Travel, access, whether there is a kitchen, power and water. This is where surprise costs live. |
| Service style | Drop off, buffet, bowl food, canapes or plated. Each is a different staffing plan. |
| Dietary requirements | Changes the menu and the price, and asking up front reads as competence. |
| Budget, as a band | Per head or total. A band gets answered where an open box gets skipped. |
| How they found you | One optional question that tells you where to spend next. |
Seven fields, and none of them a bare browser dropdown. The operating system paints the open list on a native select and ignores what the designer asked for, so on a phone your careful page suddenly looks like a government form. We build the choices as controls that match the rest of the site.
The rest of the form craft
- Split it. Two short steps, event details then contact details, reads lighter than one long column, and if someone stops after the first you still see what you nearly had.
- Mark optional fields optional. Every required field is one more reason to close the tab. Date, headcount and contact are required. The rest is not.
- Get the keyboard right. An email field that opens the email keyboard, a number field that opens digits. Small, and it decides whether typing on a phone is easy or annoying.
- Write the confirmation. Not the word thanks. Say what you will send back, and what you still need from them.
- Format the email you receive. The subject line should carry the date, the headcount and the venue so you can triage from a lock screen. The body should be a readable list, not a dump of field names.
Where enquiries go after that
At step 02 and step 03 an enquiry lands in your inbox and in a sheet you can sort and filter. That is enough to run a diary from.
A CRM with logins, pipeline stages, a dashboard and automatic follow ups is step 04, EUR 3.500 to 7.500, 6 to 12 weeks. So is taking a deposit by card, because payments bring accounts, refunds, receipts and states that have to be right. A quote that treats checkout as a small extra is a quote that will move later.
Which step you are on
| What you need | Step | Price | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| One page, sample menus, a properly built enquiry form | 01 | EUR 600-900 | 1-2 weeks |
| 2 to 3 pages, full enquiry flow, basic CMS for menus | 02 | EUR 900-1.500 | 2-3 weeks |
| Separate wedding, corporate and private hire pages, CMS, gallery, booking or contact flow | 03 | EUR 1.500-3.500 | 3-6 weeks |
| Client logins, deposits and card payment, CRM, dashboard | 04 | EUR 3.500-7.500 | 6-12 weeks |
The full list sits on packages.
How the build runs
- Scoping. What you cater, who for, and what you need to know before you can quote.
- Fixed quote. One number and one timeline from the ranges above.
- Content. Sample menus, prices, photographs of your own food, and the questions you ask every client. This is the part that waits on you.
- Build. The form is built first and tested on a phone, because it is the part that earns. Design and engineering run together here, which is how we work, on Next.js deployed at the edge so the page loads at a venue with poor signal.
- Review and launch. One round, then live, with analytics recording how many people start the form and how many finish it, so the next change is based on evidence.
After launch
Care is EUR 100 to 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, such as swapping a seasonal menu or adding a dietary option to the form. It does not cover a redesign or new features.
SEO foundation is a one-off at EUR 450 to 750: Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a plan for the next 3 to 6 months. SEO growth at EUR 500 to 800 per month is the version that continues, and it earns its place when you want pages for each service and each area you cover. Start with the one-off and decide later.
When to spend less
Three cases where the smaller number is the right one.
- Only the form is wrong. If your site reads well and only the enquiries are thin, say so in your message. We will scope the form on its own and quote that, instead of selling you a rebuild.
- You are booked out. A caterer with a full season does not need more enquiries, they need better ones. That is field design and published pricing, not pages.
- You have no photographs of your own work. Then photography is the first spend. Stock images of a buffet nobody made undercut whatever we build on them, at any step.
Questions buyers ask
Will a longer form put people off?
Some people, yes, and mainly the ones who were never going to book. The way to keep the serious ones is to make the questions easy rather than few: bands instead of exact figures, two short steps, and everything beyond date, headcount and contact optional. Someone planning a wedding expects to be asked about the wedding.
Should I publish prices?
Publishing a from price per head, or a minimum order value, does the same filtering job as the form and does it earlier. It costs you the enquiries you would have turned down anyway. We take our own advice: our price list is on the site, which is why you are reading numbers rather than a contact button.
Can I take a deposit on the site?
Yes, at step 04, EUR 3.500 to 7.500. Card payment means accounts, order states, refunds and receipts, and it belongs in a project scoped for it. Until then, an invoice after you confirm the quote keeps the site simple and the money the same.
Do I own everything?
Yes. The code, the repository and the database are yours. Hosting is agreed per project, so it can sit with us or with you depending on what suits the business.
Tell us what you cater and what you need to know before you can quote, and we will tell you which step you are on and what it costs: get in touch.
Building something?
JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.