BBQ catering software built by people who actually smoke meat. Most catering platforms treat food as a line item. Ours starts where your money actually lives: the yield chain. A brisket is not 15 pounds of brisket – it is trim loss, bone share, cook shrink, and what finally lands on the plate. Price from that truth and the rest of the business follows.

The catering cost & profit calculator (free)

Tell it who is eating and what you are serving; it works backward through real per-cut yields to a shopping list, labor plan, fuel and travel costs, and four pricing methods side by side – target margin, food-cost percent, markup, and per-head. Kids portions, multi-meat share splits, drink packages, rentals, stations, and tastings are all first-class. Price a job free or read the full guide.

Custom meat weight pricing, the honest way

Every cut carries its real trim and bone loss and cook shrink – and where a cut can be bought different ways, the software knows the difference: a whole PSMO tenderloin against cut steaks, packer brisket against trimmed flat, USDA Choice against Prime grade. The “Which is a better deal?” comparison prices every buying form at your supplier’s numbers, knife time included. Set your own yields, trim times, and costs once in My Defaults and every job starts from your reality.

A whole hog order calculator (and 70+ other cuts)

Whole hog, cabrito, briskets by the dozen – the same timing engine that powers our smoking calculator runs each cut at your actual quantities, so a 12-packer job schedules like 12 packers. Sizing a pig roast? The whole hog guide and calculator answer “how big a hog for 100 people” with real yield math.

USDA market pricing, built in

We track USDA market data nightly – grocery feature prices across 8 regions and national wholesale values back to 2001. One click fills your cost defaults from current wholesale plus your supplier margin, every USDA-sourced number is dated and labeled, and your own prices are never overwritten without asking. See this week’s prices and our market reports.

Quotes, bids, and catering invoices

Pro turns a priced job into client-ready documents: itemized quotes, bids, and invoices with your business name and branding, deposit terms, and sales tax – plus saved jobs so your next event starts from your last one. Online payment collection (clients pay by card, funds settle to your own Stripe account) is built and gated for launch.

Kitchen prep sheets and the day-of ops pack

Every job generates its day-of pack: the shopping list in purchasable pieces, prep and trim schedule from your own per-cut times, cook timeline from the real engine, packing checklist, and holding plan with transport windows – the drive rides inside the rest, the way actual catering works.

Scheduling, delivery, and event booking

Drive-time estimation with address autosuggest is live: it prices your travel legs and checks transport time against each cut’s safe holding window. Full event booking – client-facing estimate requests, calendars, deposits to confirm – is on the roadmap as our estimator app, and the waitlist gets it first. We will say plainly what we are not: this is not a POS or a payroll system – it is the pricing and production brain that those tools never had.

What it costs

The calculator is free – genuinely, not trial-free. Pro (saved jobs, client documents, ops packs) launches with founding-member pricing for the waitlist. Join from the calculator page.

FAQ

Is there software specifically for BBQ catering?

Yes – this is it. General catering platforms manage orders but know nothing about meat: no trim yields, no cook shrink, no whole-animal math, no market prices. MeatSmokingCalculator’s catering software starts from pitmaster-native yield math and builds the business layer – quoting, invoicing, prep sheets – on top of it.

How does the pricing calculator handle meat costs?

Three ways: enter your supplier prices by hand, let the software learn them from your saved jobs, or fill them from live USDA wholesale data plus your typical margin – dated and labeled, and never overwriting numbers you set yourself.

Can it price a whole hog or custom cuts?

Yes. Whole hog and cabrito carry real dressed-weight yields and timing, and you can add fully custom meats – your serving size, trim loss, and cook shrink – which then flow through the same pricing engine as everything else.

Does it replace my POS or accounting software?

No, and it does not try to. It is the job-costing and production system: what to buy, what it costs, what to charge, and how the day runs. Your POS rings sales; your accountant keeps books; this makes sure the number you quoted was profitable before you lit the fire.