FoodCore helps wedding caterers manage menus through multiple revisions, track dietary requirements across large guest lists, and calculate per-head costs accurately from real recipe data. Stop guessing at margins. Start every wedding booking with confidence.
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Wedding catering sits at the high-stakes end of the event catering market. Large guest counts, diverse dietary needs, multiple rounds of menu revisions, precise per-head pricing, and the absolute requirement that everything goes right on the day — it is an operationally demanding business to run, especially as a small independent caterer without a dedicated back-office team.
The typical wedding caterer manages this with a combination of spreadsheets, Word documents, and handwritten notes. It works — until the couple changes their starter four weeks before the wedding, the dietary requirements from the RSVPs arrive as a patchwork of emails, and you need to recalculate your food cost and regenerate your shopping list at 10pm. That's when the manual approach breaks down.
Wedding catering software built for this workflow changes the equation. FoodCore connects your recipe library to your per-head costs, your allergen matrix, your menu management, and your shopping list — in one place. Change a dish on the menu and your costs update. Update an ingredient price and your margin recalculates. Receive a guest's allergen information and check every dish on the menu against it in seconds.
FoodCore is used by independent wedding caterers across the UK — from small county-based catering businesses that do 10 weddings a year to teams handling 3–4 weddings every month. It is not a CRM or event management platform. It is specifically a food operations tool: recipe costing, allergen tracking, label generation, and shopping list production. The business side of running a professional catering operation, without the enterprise price tag.
Wedding catering has specific operational demands that generic catering software often doesn't address. Here's what FoodCore is built to handle.
A 100-guest wedding typically involves a dozen different dietary combinations — gluten-free guests, vegetarians, vegans, nut allergies, dairy intolerances, halal requirements. Tracking which dishes are safe for each guest, across a full three-course menu, manually is genuinely risky. FoodCore's allergen matrix makes it systematic and auditable.
Most weddings involve a tasting session and at least one round of menu revisions after it. Couples change dishes, swap ingredients, add courses, or simplify the menu after seeing the costs. Every revision means updating costs, allergen information, and your shopping quantities. FoodCore makes this a one-step update rather than a multi-document exercise.
Wedding catering is typically priced per head, and couples compare multiple caterers' quotes. Pricing too high loses the booking; pricing too low — without knowing your actual food cost — means working at a loss. FoodCore calculates your true food cost per head from your recipes, so every quote you issue is based on real data, not an estimate.
UK food law requires you to be able to provide accurate allergen information for every dish you serve. Weddings are high-stakes environments for allergen management — guests with serious allergies, often with a venue that will be asking for your allergen documentation. FoodCore's allergen matrix is your systematic, provable answer to that requirement.
Wedding caterers often provide elements that are pre-packed — individual favour boxes with edible gifts, dessert portions boxed for transport, late-night snack packs. Under Natasha's Law, any food packed before the event requires a compliant PPDS label. FoodCore generates these automatically from your recipes, ready to print before you pack.
A recipe developed for 4 or 10 portions needs to scale accurately to 85 or 130 — the actual confirmed guest count for a specific wedding. Ingredient ratios matter at scale, and the shopping list must be exact. FoodCore scales every recipe accurately to the confirmed guest count, then generates the shopping list from those scaled quantities.
From initial client consultation to the day itself — FoodCore handles the operational detail so you can focus on the food.
Build wedding menus from your recipe library — mix and match starters, mains, desserts, canapés, and evening food. Each wedding has its own menu that you can revise without affecting your core recipe library. When a couple changes a dish after their tasting, you update it in FoodCore and costs, allergens, and shopping quantities update automatically throughout.
Enter the confirmed guest count and FoodCore calculates your food cost per head and total food cost for the wedding, based on your recipes and current ingredient prices. Set your target food cost percentage and see whether the menu works at your required margin before you issue a quote. When ingredient prices change, recalculate instantly — no rebuilding spreadsheets.
As guest dietary information arrives through the RSVP process, log allergens and dietary requirements in FoodCore against each wedding. Cross-reference them against the menu using the allergen matrix to identify safe dishes for each requirement. Generate a dietary summary for your team's briefing document, and have accurate information ready when the venue asks for it.
FoodCore's allergen matrix shows every dish on the wedding menu against all 14 major UK allergens in a clear grid. You can see which dishes are free from specific allergens at a glance, identify which guests can eat which dishes, and produce an allergen reference document for the venue and your service team. No manual cross-referencing of ingredient lists required.
Enter the confirmed guest count and FoodCore scales every recipe precisely — including all sub-recipes and component dishes. The resulting ingredient quantities feed directly into your shopping list, scaled to the units you order in. No more manually multiplying recipe quantities for 110 guests at 11pm after the final confirmation arrives. FoodCore handles the maths.
Wedding favour boxes with edible gifts, individual dessert pots, late-night snack packages — if it's pre-packed before the event, it needs a Natasha's Law compliant label. FoodCore generates print-ready PPDS labels from your recipes: full ingredients list in descending weight order, all 14 allergens highlighted in bold. Print before you pack and you're compliant.
FoodCore works for every type of wedding food business — whether you cater full wedding breakfasts or specialise in cakes and desserts.
Owner-operated wedding catering businesses doing 10–50 weddings a year are the core FoodCore customer. You have a solid recipe repertoire, an established client base, and a real need for software that makes the admin faster without requiring an IT team to set up or maintain.
In-house catering teams at hotels and wedding venues often manage multiple weddings per month with a shared recipe library. FoodCore's recipe management and per-event cost calculation supports this kind of team-based operation, with consistent data across the whole catering team.
Private chefs who take on wedding bookings alongside regular clients need software that scales to large guest counts without requiring commercial kitchen infrastructure. FoodCore's recipe scaling, per-head cost calculation, and shopping list generation is ideal for this kind of flexible, high-touch operation.
Wedding cake businesses and dessert caterers have specific labelling requirements — tiered cakes with multiple component recipes, dessert tables with pre-packaged items, and individual portions that each need a compliant label. FoodCore's recipe costing and PPDS label generation covers all of this from a single recipe library.
Small UK wedding catering businesses using FoodCore to manage their operations.
"We cater 3–4 weddings per month. Tracking dietary requirements across 150+ guests was a nightmare — emails, paper notes, the odd scribble on a seating plan. FoodCore's allergen matrix means we can give accurate information to every guest and venue, and produce a proper allergen document that venues now expect to see."
"Calculating per-head costs accurately was always guesswork before FoodCore. I'd estimate based on similar previous weddings and hope ingredient prices hadn't moved. Now I know my margin on every wedding before I even confirm the booking — and I can model different menu options to show couples what they get at different price points."
"When a bride changes her menu three weeks before the wedding — which happens more than you'd think — FoodCore recalculates everything in seconds. The updated cost, the new shopping list, the revised allergen information. Previously that would have meant a spreadsheet and half an evening. Now it's done before I've finished the call."
Most independent wedding caterers manage their business with a combination of spreadsheets for costs, Word documents for menus and allergen sheets, and email for client communication. This works until the client changes the menu — which happens at almost every wedding. FoodCore is purpose-built software for caterers that connects your recipe library to your per-head costs, allergen declarations, and shopping lists. Change the menu, and everything updates automatically.
FoodCore's allergen matrix gives you a clear view of every allergen across every dish on the wedding menu. When you receive dietary information from guests — typically via the couple's RSVP process — you can cross-reference each requirement against the menu instantly. You can identify which dishes are safe for guests with specific allergies, flag any dishes that require modifications, and generate a dietary summary for your team's briefing on the day.
Yes. UK food law requires all food businesses, including wedding caterers, to be able to provide accurate allergen information for every dish they serve. For served wedding food, this means your team must be able to answer guest questions about the 14 major allergens. For any food that is pre-packed before the wedding — individual dessert boxes, favours with food, or portioned items — Natasha's Law also requires a full ingredient label with allergens highlighted in bold. FoodCore's food labelling software handles both requirements.
FoodCore calculates your exact food cost per head for any wedding menu and guest count. Build your recipes in FoodCore with ingredient costs, then assign them to the wedding menu. Enter the guest count and FoodCore calculates the total food cost and cost per head. You can also set a target margin to find the right per-head price. When ingredient prices change, your costs update automatically — so you always know your true margin before you confirm a booking. See our recipe management software for full details on how recipe costing works.
Every feature included. No card required. Cancel any time. Wedding menu management, allergen matrix, per-head cost calculation, and PPDS labels — all at £55/month.
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