Excellent source for catering related templates and forms

If you are in the restaurant business, you might be in constant need of forms and templates for taking the order, executing the order, dealing with the suppliers and for accounting purposes. You need not really search too much for getting the required forms. There is an online repository of catering forms and templates created by a very experienced person in the Catering business named Dave Lipson. He has put in a collection of catering forms and templates in an online portal,  FreeRestaurantForms.com. You could reach this online portal and find different types of forms including the frequently used Catering contract worksheet. Dave Lipson is in the restaurant business for more than 20 years. some of the other templates that are available in his portal includes Restaurant kitchen inventory, Restaurant plating manual, Master costing spreadsheet and Restaurant washroom checklist.

As you might be requiring the contract worksheet for taking party orders, Catering contract worksheet available in this portal contains all the information that you might require to service the contract. This template has fields like Estimated number of guests and Final Guarantee of guests, which will help the caterer to plan property and start procuring the correct quantity of food materials required. There are fields like Event day, Event day and serving time that will enable you to plan the transportation of prepared food items to the venue. There is also the option of getting the confirmation from the requester that they will take care of chairs, tables, table cloths and napkins. Once you show this worksheet to the requester, they will start to think regarding the chairs and if they require it from you, you can include it in your service cost. There is the multi text entry item for the menu, wherein you enter all the items that are requested by the client. In addition to this contract worksheet,  FreeRestaurantForms.com provides a number of useful templates and forms related to the catering industry.

Math-Time With A Free Restaurant Inventory Spreadsheet

Running a restaurant is virtually impossible without a restaurant inventory spreadsheet. I am sure all restaurant owners know that. But sadly, most restaurant owners don’t really understand the full responsibility that their position entails. Nope, I’m not saying it’s your fault, I’m just saying that you’re unaware of a few of those many responsibilities you have toward your restaurant!

For example, are you in the habit of conducting a restaurant inventory at the end of every month? I’m pretty sure that you are. It’s a long process and often takes two to three days….right? Moreover, some details are “conveniently” forgotten by your employees.

Tips and Tricks

But you take it as part and parcel of running a business. All these problems and losses can be avoided if you do a daily inventory! Yes! A daily inventory, it’s just going to take half an hour of your time, but trust me, it’s going to make you a very rich man/woman!

Another, very important tip for you when you’re calculating your daily food cost is to have all the representatives who supply you with the raw food material while you are doing this vital calculation, present. Next, enter the amount of raw material of each type in your free restaurant inventory spreadsheet.

Then enter the food and beverage items in the appropriate category and let your computer work its magic. Also, if you’ve forgotten, here’s a reminder to include all the delivery charges as well! So along with all the food and beverage charges you need to include the cost incurred for having them delivered to your restaurant’s kitchen.

The easiest way to make a spreadsheet on your own is using MS Excel.

However, often people forget to include the most obvious elements in their spreadsheet!

So it’s always better to let a professional handle this. Unfortunately, a professional will also charge a whole lot of money for the service they offer you. But at my site, you can get a restaurant inventory spreadsheet absolutely free!

Of course it is exhaustive to conduct an inventory everyday. So for your convenience, you can conduct an inventory of the different sections of your restaurant – dining room, kitchen or bar – several times so as to get an average figure.

Use this figure as a frame of reference. But you must update this figure- your production inventory once - every few months! What are you waiting for? Get started with your math with the help of my free restaurant inventory spreadsheet!

FREE Master Costing Spreadsheet An Effective Way To Maintain Accurate Pricing

Maintaining an accurate count on how much your food inventory costs each month is necessary to running a successful restaurant. Being able to use a spreadsheet will make monitoring individual items much easier. These can be broken up into separate sheets, so that all the food isn't piled onto one single page. These can take quite some time to set up, especially if you are going through and putting everything in by hand. There is a lot to write down when you have a large restaurant. Finding a free master costing spreadsheet that has already been created is the key to getting this all organized much faster.

A great site to use for such a spreadsheet is freerestaurantforms.com. These are completely free and can be downloaded quickly to your computer. The format is very easy to follow and can be altered to fit the inventory you have, there will be menu items that need to be added to or omitted from the list. This spreadsheet is et up into three different worksheets; appetizers, main dishes, and desserts.

The appetizer page lists all items in the left column, then to the right are individual columns for; cost, sell price, percent cost, suggested 35 percent max, and percent at 10.00. The next two worksheets are set up in exactly the same manner.

This free master costing spreadsheet allows all pricing to be looked at in a matter of minutes. These spreadsheets are easy to change when items drop from the menu or are added to it. Being able to quickly alter the pricing is simple process as well.

The calculations that are figured into the spreadsheet make it possible to have accurate amounts immediately shown, instead of wondering if all your calculations are correct. These worksheets take a lot of the extra effort out of maintaining proper cost amounts, where this energy can be focused on other aspect of running the restaurant.

Advertising With Restaurant Newsletter Marketing

Tighter budgets call for new and creative methods to marketing to the general public. As a restaurant owner, you're accustomed to buying space in print medium. Maybe you've even tried your hand at brief radio and television ads. Before the economy took a down turn, these were reasonable and even affordable ends to a means. No longer can you rely on a constant flow of customers, so you may have cut back your advertising budget.

If you can't afford expensive and seemingly unproven ad space, it's time to turn your eyes to the new way to market your business. Internet marketing provides businesses with an unlimited wealth of consumers. The internet gives you the biggest customer base possible and weaves personal touches in that will lure in new business and keep the respect and trust of established customers.

Business is hectic, whether you're seeing a steady stream of customers or struggling to keep the doors open. Let someone else take the brunt of advertising for you. One of the hottest new marketing campaigns today is newsletters. You can have access to tons of pre-made templates to get you up and running in the restaurant newsletter game.

Email newsletter marketing takes your business to a whole new level. You can reach out to the community and abroad and capture new business and maintain your current customer base with newsletter marketing. By providing your customers with information regarding specials, promotions and coupons, you can bring them back in the door and get great word of mouth advertising, as well.

With professionally created templates, you simply plug in your own graphics and data, import your contact list and let the advertising end of things run itself. You'll get real time data on whose read the newsletter, how many have passed it on to friends and family and what kind of response you're getting from your marketing campaign. Visit to learn more.