Per-person rates by meal, what drop-off saves against staffed service, how staffing is charged, and multi-day crew runs — from a working Santa Barbara caterer. No “contact us for pricing.”
Both ends are real jobs we do. $17 is a boxed-lunch drop-off — we deliver and set up, your team serves. $57 is a fully staffed day with breakfast, lunch and dinner and our people on site throughout. Everything in between is a question of how many meals run and how much of the job you want us to handle. All-in means food, staff, the service fee, sales tax and card processing — there is nothing added after this.
Free · about 2 minutes · no phone call required
You pay for the meals that actually run. A team eating one lunch is charged for one lunch; a crew on site from breakfast through dinner is charged for three.
| Breakfast | $13 per person |
| Lunch | $15 per person |
| Dinner | $16 per person |
| All three, one day | $44 per person |
Seasonal, scratch-made menus by chef-owner Golzar Meamar, designed around your team and any dietary needs — vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and allergies handled cleanly rather than as an afterthought. All-day snacks and coffee can be added and are itemized separately on your estimate. See a sample menu →
This is the single biggest lever on your number. It’s the first thing our estimate asks.
We deliver, you set out and serve. No staff on site. You pay for the food, the 5% service fee and sales tax — no staffing line at all, and no event minimum on any day of the week. A 50-person lunch drop-off is about $872, roughly $17 a head.
We bring the team, serve, and clean up. The same 50-person lunch with our team on site is about $965 — the difference is the staffing hours below. This is the option for receptions, client dinners and anything you’d rather not be managing yourself.
You have food handled — we bring people, rentals and bar. No food line at all — you’re billed for the hours worked at $40 per hour plus whatever rentals and bar you need. We’ve run exactly this for a company event where catering was already handled elsewhere.
Our team is billed at $40 per hour for culinary and service, covering setup, service and breakdown at each meal. We plan about one team member per 50 people (rounded up) and 2 hours per meal service.
So a 50-person day with all three meals is 1 team member × 6 hours × $40 = $240 for the day. The same group fed only lunch is $80. That’s the whole model: meals drive the hours, not the length of your day. A ten-hour offsite with one lunch service doesn’t get billed ten hours of labour, which is exactly how event-style day-rate pricing tends to go wrong on corporate work.
One weekday, itemized the way your actual estimate would be.
| Food — breakfast, lunch & dinner, $44 per person | $2,200 |
| Service staff — 1 × 6 hrs at $40/hr | $240 |
| Service fee (5%) | $122 |
| Sales tax (7.75%) | $189 |
| Card processing (3.5%) | $85 |
| All-in total | $2,837 |
| ≈ $57 per person · 25% deposit to reserve the date ≈ $709 |
The same 50 people as a lunch drop-off is about $872 (≈$17 a head); as a staffed lunch, about $965 (≈$19 a head). Paying by check or bank transfer instead of card saves the processing fee — about $85 on the full-day example.
Production shoots, conferences, retreats and multi-day offsites — where the same crew eats on site day after day.
| Food — 5 days × 50 people × $44 per person | $11,000 |
| Service staff — 6 hrs a day at $40/hr | $1,200 |
| Service fee (5%) | $610 |
| Sales tax (7.75%) | $946 |
| Card processing (3.5%) | $427 |
| All-in total | $14,183 |
| 250 person-days · 750 meals served · ≈ $57 per person, per day |
Between $17 and $57 per person, per day, all-in with us — that's food, any staff on site, the service fee, sales tax and card processing. The low end is a boxed-lunch drop-off; the high end is a fully staffed day with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Per meal, breakfast is $13, lunch $15 and dinner $16 per person, so a full three-meal day is $44 per person in food.
Only on Saturdays. Saturday events carry a $5,000 event minimum; Monday through Friday and Sunday there is no minimum at all, which is what makes weekday corporate work cost-effective with us. A drop-off order never carries the minimum, whatever day it lands on.
A drop-off is the food, the 5% service fee and sales tax — we deliver and set up, and your team serves. Adding our staff to the same 50-person lunch takes it from about $872 to about $965, because staffing is billed by the hour on top. Drop-off is genuinely the cheaper option, and for an office lunch it's usually the right one.
By the hour, at $40 per hour, covering setup, service and breakdown at each meal. We plan roughly one team member per 50 people (rounded up) and 2 hours per meal service — so a 50-person day with three meals is 1 team member for 6 hours, $240 for the day. Meal services drive the hours, not the length of your day — a crew fed twice costs less to staff than a crew fed three times.
Yes, and it's billed as one job rather than as a stack of separate events: the whole run goes on a single invoice with a single deposit, however many days it covers. Headcount can change part-way through — you tell us the stretches ("60 for the first five days, then 105") and each day prices at its own count. A 5-day run for 50 people with three meals a day works out to about $14,183, roughly $57 per person per day.
A 5% service fee and local sales tax — the tax rate depends on where you are (about 7.75% in the Santa Ynez Valley). Card payments carry a 3.5% processing fee; paying by check or bank transfer avoids it entirely. Every figure on this page includes all three, so nothing appears later that isn't here.
A 25% deposit reserves the date, and the balance is due 30 days before. Events booked inside 30 days are simply paid in full up front. You get one itemized invoice — the line items are the same ones on your estimate, which is what accounting departments tend to ask us for.
More questions? The full FAQ covers dietary needs, tastings and logistics. See what we do for companies on corporate events, browse the sample menu, or read about holiday parties. Planning a wedding instead? What wedding catering costs →
The instant estimate runs the exact pricing engine behind our real client proposals — your dates, your headcount, your meals. Multi-day runs included.
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