Paste your price sheet, three or four packages and your terms decisions into ChatGPT, and ask for a fixed-order proposal with brackets for client name, date, headcount and totals. Then recalculate every figure yourself and have the deposit and cancellation wording checked once by a solicitor. Keep it in a ChatGPT Project so each enquiry starts from a short brief.
A downloaded template leaves the real work with you: fitting your own packages, margins and terms into someone else's wording. The build below runs the other way round: you supply the decisions, ChatGPT supplies structure and plain English, and the finished template already contains your menu. It also pays to know where ChatGPT is weak here. It will invent a deposit percentage, a cancellation scale and an insurance claim that all sound reasonable, and now and then it drops a line when it fills a pricing table. Each section below is built to catch those.
Four inputs ChatGPT cannot invent for you
The prompt is the short part. Gathering the inputs takes an afternoon, and they decide whether the finished template is yours or generic.
First, a price sheet: for each package, what a head costs you and what you charge, plus the fixed charges that do not grow with numbers (delivery, staff hours, equipment hire). If you do not have one yet, build it with the cost-per-person pricing sheet first, because a proposal can only be as sound as the margins under it.
Second, the packages themselves. Three or four is enough. Write each as a name, what it includes, a minimum headcount, a price per head and what costs extra. Name them by occasion ("Desk Lunch", "Working Buffet", "Celebration Buffet") rather than Bronze, Silver and Gold, because a client can picture an occasion and has no picture of silver.
Third, a list of decisions about terms. These are yours to make, and ChatGPT should only word them. The table shows the ones that matter, with illustrative settings to react to.
| Decision | Illustrative setting | Settle this first |
|---|---|---|
| Quote validity | 14 days | How long can you hold the date and the prices? |
| Deposit | 30% on acceptance | Does it cover food or hire you must commit to early? |
| Balance | Due 7 days before the event | Does it land before your final food order goes in? |
| Final numbers | Confirmed 7 days before; no reductions after | What happens to food bought for guests who drop out? |
| Extra guests | Added at the per-head price if the kitchen can cover them | Where is your ceiling, as a percentage or in heads? |
| Cancellation | Three steps, tied to days before the event | Which costs are already committed at each step? |
| Overtime | $38 per staff hour after the agreed finish | Who counts the hours, and where are they recorded? |
| Allergens | One statement of what the kitchen can and cannot promise | What do you genuinely control? |
| Payment | Bank transfer or card, fees absorbed or passed on | How does a corporate finance team pay you, and how fast? |
Fourth, one real proposal you were pleased with, with the client's details removed. It shows ChatGPT your voice and your level of detail, which does more than an instruction such as "friendly but professional". That phrase gives every caterer the same bland tone.
The prompt that builds the template, with brackets left open
The prompt below does four jobs. It restricts ChatGPT to the material you paste in, it fixes the order of the sections, it asks for every pricing row as a formula so you can see how each number is made, and it ends by asking ChatGPT to confess its assumptions. Replace the square-bracketed instructions with your own material before you send it.
You are helping a catering company write a reusable proposal template.
Use ONLY the information below. If something is not given, leave it as a
[BRACKETED PLACEHOLDER]. Do not invent prices, percentages, policies,
insurance cover, certifications or claims about our kitchen.
OUR PACKAGES (copy names and prices exactly):
[paste: name, inclusions, minimum guests, price per head, extras]
OUR FIXED CHARGES:
[paste: delivery and set-up, staff per hour, hire items with prices]
OUR TERMS DECISIONS:
[paste the decisions table: validity, deposit, balance date, final numbers,
extra guests, cancellation steps, overtime, allergens, payment methods]
OUR VOICE (a past proposal with client details removed):
[paste]
WRITE THE TEMPLATE WITH THESE SECTIONS, IN THIS ORDER:
1. Cover line: [CLIENT FIRST NAME OR COMPANY], [EVENT TYPE], [EVENT DATE]
2. What we heard: three to five bullets restating the brief (date, time,
place type, headcount, dietary counts, budget if given)
3. Recommended option and one alternative: what each includes, price per head
4. Pricing table: one row per item as a formula, e.g. [HEADCOUNT x PRICE PER
HEAD]; then subtotal, [TAX LINE], total, and the all-in price per head
5. Dietary and allergen note: only what our terms decisions say
6. Payment schedule: deposit and balance, with dates worked out from
[EVENT DATE]
7. Terms that change the price: final numbers, extra guests, cancellation
steps, overtime, in plain English
8. How to accept: reply with the words "I accept [OPTION]", and the date
the quote expires
9. Contact line
RULES: British English. Plain words, sentences under 20 words where
possible. Every item named in an "Includes" line needs its own pricing row.
After the template, list every assumption you made and every point where
you were unsure, as a numbered list.Each rule earns its place. "Use ONLY the information below" stops the invented deposit. The bracketed placeholders make the output a template rather than a one-off, so the same file serves next month's enquiry. Formula rows such as headcount times price per head let you check a figure by eye. The assumptions list is the most useful part: in a typical first draft it is where ChatGPT admits it guessed the deposit, the payment day and the tax treatment.
Run the prompt in a fresh chat, read the draft with your decisions table beside it, and expect to go round twice. Ask for changes by section number ("section 6: the deposit is 30% on acceptance and the balance is due 7 days before the event; remove the sentence about payment on the day") rather than asking for the whole proposal again, which can disturb sections you had already approved.
What the first draft of the template gets wrong
Here is an illustrative excerpt of the terms section a first draft can produce, followed by the assumptions list it ends with. The wording is typical of AI drafting rather than a quote from any real run.
7. Terms that change the price
- A 50% non-refundable deposit secures your date.
- The balance is due on the day of the event.
- Cancellations within 14 days of the event may incur charges.
- Our kitchen is nut-free and we can accommodate all dietary requirements.
- We are fully insured and compliant with all food safety regulations.
- This agreement is governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and the client
indemnifies the caterer against all claims.
ASSUMPTIONS I MADE
1. I assumed a 50% deposit.
2. I assumed payment is taken on the day.
3. I assumed prices include tax.None of those are grammar problems. The prose is fine; the content is a guess. Go through the lines one by one against your decisions table.
- "A 50% non-refundable deposit." Your table says 30%. ChatGPT filled the gap with a figure that sounds normal, and it admitted as much in assumption 1. Replace it with your own percentage and delete the word "non-refundable" unless you have decided that too.
- "Due on the day of the event." This contradicts your balance date, and it is a cash problem as well: you have bought the food by then. Swap it for a date worked out from the event date.
- "Within 14 days ... may incur charges." "Within" can mean by day 14 or inside day 14, "may" gives no number and "charges" gives no amount. Replace the sentence with the three-step scale you decided on.
- "Our kitchen is nut-free." Only you can say what your kitchen does. If it handles nuts, the true sentence is a different, more careful one, covered in a later section.
- "Fully insured and compliant." ChatGPT inserted a compliance claim you never made. Cut it unless you can show the certificates, and attach the certificates instead of the adjectives.
- The governing-law line and the indemnity. Boilerplate you did not ask for. Take both out and let a solicitor decide whether your terms need either.
The test that catches all six is mechanical. Tick each term in the draft against a row in your decisions table, and delete any term that has no row. Anything left is a decision you made, and anything deleted was ChatGPT's guess.
Per-head pricing: tiers, minimums and the 80th-guest cliff
A per-head price looks simple until the headcount moves. Three choices matter: how the packages are defined, where the price breaks fall, and which charges stay fixed whatever the numbers. The illustrative packages below are the ones used from here on.
| Package | Includes | Per head | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desk Lunch | Boxed sandwich or wrap, salad pot, fruit, bottled drink; delivered, no staff | $22.00 | 15 guests |
| Working Buffet | Hot main, two sides, salad, bread, dessert, soft drinks; compostable serviceware; staff and hire extra | $31.00 | 20 guests |
| Celebration Buffet | Two hot mains, three sides, two salads, dessert, tea and coffee; china and linen; one server per 25 guests | $42.00 | 30 guests |
Price breaks are where the draft needs the most supervision. Say you want to reward big groups: Working Buffet at $31 a head, dropping to $29 for 80 guests or more. Written as a whole-order break ("80 guests or more: $29 per head"), the arithmetic runs the wrong way. Seventy-nine guests cost 79 x $31 = $2,449, and 80 guests cost 80 x $29 = $2,320. A client saves $129 by adding one person, and a sharp-eyed buyer will do exactly that.
The graduated version removes the cliff: the first 79 guests are $31 each, and each guest from the 80th is $29. Eighty guests then cost $2,478 and 81 cost $2,507, so the total rises with every head and the sentence is still easy to read. Put the test in the prompt every time you change a break: "Show the total for 78, 79, 80 and 81 guests and confirm the total never falls as headcount rises."
A minimum headcount works the other way. An order for 12 Working Buffets bills as 20 guests, $620, because the cooking and the van cost about the same for 12 as for 20. Offering the Desk Lunch instead, and saying so in the proposal, keeps the enquiry alive without breaking your own minimum.
Fixed charges deserve their own rows because they change what the client feels per head. Delivery and set-up at $60 adds $1.50 a head on 40 guests and $4.00 a head on 15. A buyer holding a per-head budget will compare the all-in figure, not your food price, so show both: "Working Buffet $31.00 per head; $40.10 per head all in".
A corporate lunch for 40, filled in from the brief
This is the enquiry that arrives, pasted into a new chat inside the Project (illustrative, with a placeholder name):
Hi, we need lunch for about 40 on Thursday 12 November, served at 12:30 in our meeting room. Four vegetarians, two vegans, one gluten-free and one nut allergy. Budget around $1,500 all in. Can you send options? Thanks, [first name]
The instruction that goes with it is short: "Fill the template for this enquiry. Use Working Buffet. Give Option A with service and Option B without. Show the Includes line next to a pricing row for everything included." Suppose the first fill comes back like this.
OPTION A: Working Buffet with service
Includes: hot main, two sides, salad, bread, dessert, soft drinks,
tea and coffee station, one server for three hours, delivery and set-up
Working Buffet: 40 x $31.00 = $1,240.00
Tea and coffee station: 40 x $3.50 = $140.00
Delivery and set-up: $60.00
Hot-holding cabinets: 2 x $25.00 = $50.00
TOTAL BEFORE TAX: $1,490.00Everything on the page is consistent except one thing. The Includes line promises "one server for three hours", and no row prices it. The $1,490 total is Option B's price attached to Option A's description. Sent like that, the quote would give away $114 of labour, which is 7.1% of the correct price of $1,604, and nobody would notice until the invoice. The rule that prevents it is the standing line in the prompt: every item in an Includes line needs its own pricing row. Checking by hand takes a minute, which is why that check opens the list of seven below.
With the server row restored, the two options read as follows. All figures are before tax and illustrative.
| Line | Option A: with service | Option B: self-serve |
|---|---|---|
| Working Buffet, 40 x $31.00 | $1,240.00 | $1,240.00 |
| Tea and coffee station, 40 x $3.50 | $140.00 | $140.00 |
| Delivery and set-up | $60.00 | $60.00 |
| Server, 3 hours x $38.00 | $114.00 | not included |
| Hot-holding cabinets, 2 x $25.00 | $50.00 | $50.00 |
| Total before tax | $1,604.00 | $1,490.00 |
| All-in price per head | $40.10 | $37.25 |
| Deposit, 30%, due on acceptance | $481.20 | $447.00 |
| Balance, due Thursday 5 November | $1,122.80 | $1,043.00 |
The client's budget was "around $1,500", so Option B fits and Option A needs a sentence that earns its extra $114: someone will keep the buffet hot, refilled and cleared while the meeting runs on. The brief's dietary counts go in the "What we heard" bullets and in the allergen note, so the client sees eight special meals acknowledged before anyone asks.
A week later the client writes that six more people are coming. This is the moment the Project earns its keep: paste the email and ask, "Update Option A for 46 guests and show only what changed." Food becomes 46 x $31 = $1,426 and the station 46 x $3.50 = $161. Delivery, server and cabinets stay put, so the new total is $1,811.00, which is $207 more, exactly six guests at $34.50 each. The $481.20 deposit already paid stays, and the balance becomes $1,329.80. If the difference between the old and new totals is not a clean multiple of the per-head figures, a row has moved that should not have.
Deposit, final numbers and cancellation: your call, then legal review
These three terms move money, so they get the most care. ChatGPT is useful for turning your decisions into sentences a busy office manager understands on first read. It is no use for deciding the percentages. Here are the lunch quote's terms in the wording the proposal carries, with the amounts worked out from the $1,604.00 total.
| Term | Wording on the proposal | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit | A 30% deposit secures the date and is due when you accept. | $481.20 |
| Balance | The balance is due 7 days before the event, on Thursday 5 November. | $1,122.80 |
| Final numbers | Tell us your final guest numbers by Thursday 5 November. After that we cannot reduce the number, but we can add guests at $31 each if the kitchen can cover them. | n/a |
| Cancel more than 14 days before | We keep the deposit. | $481.20 |
| Cancel 14 to 7 days before | We keep 60% of the total and invoice the difference. | $962.40 |
| Cancel fewer than 7 days before | We keep 100% of the total. | $1,604.00 |
The plain-English pass is a second prompt: "Rewrite these clauses so a busy office manager understands them on first read. Keep every number and condition unchanged. Tell me if any sentence could be read two ways." The last instruction does real work. A draft clause such as "In the event of cancellation by the Client within fourteen (14) days of the Event Date, the Caterer shall be entitled to retain sixty percent (60%) of the Total Fee" becomes "If you cancel 14 to 7 days before the event, we keep 60% of the total", and the question about ambiguity forces the boundary into the open. Is day 14 in the middle band or the first? Is day 7? The table above settles both by naming the bands.
Then stop and ask a solicitor to read the deposit, final-numbers and cancellation lines once. Whether a particular scale holds up depends on where you trade, and wording that looks like a penalty rather than a fair estimate of your loss can be challenged in some places. The review costs less and goes faster when you bring a complete draft with your decisions table attached, because the solicitor is then checking decisions rather than inventing them. Ask whether the proposal needs any of the extra clauses ChatGPT likes to add, such as governing law or an indemnity, or whether the three terms above in plain words do the job.
Allergen and dietary lines that match what your kitchen does
The nut-free claim in the first draft deserves its own section because it is the line that can hurt someone. ChatGPT writes reassuring sentences by default. Your job is to replace them with sentences that are true of your kitchen on your busiest day.
Before, as drafted: "Our kitchen is nut-free and we can accommodate all dietary requirements." After, written by the head chef and tidied by ChatGPT: "Please list every allergy and dietary need when you accept. We label each dish with its allergens. Our kitchen handles nuts, gluten and dairy, so we cannot promise that any dish is free from traces." If your kitchen really is free of an allergen, say that instead, and say what you do to keep it so.
The rules on how allergen information must be given depend on where you trade, so check them with your food-safety authority and keep the proposal consistent with your menu labels. Ask the head chef to read the sentence aloud before the template is approved; if they hesitate at any word, that word comes out.
Keep the template in a Project, and send it from your own document
A ChatGPT Project holds instructions and reference files that every chat inside it inherits. OpenAI's help page says project instructions apply only within that project and override your global custom instructions, so setting one up does not change how ChatGPT behaves for anything else. Projects are available on all individual plans: the Free plan allows five files per project, Go and Plus allow 25. Five is enough for this job.
The files are your price sheet, your packages, your terms decisions, the approved template and one past proposal. The instructions can be this short.
You write catering proposals for [COMPANY NAME]. Use only the files in this
project: price sheet, packages, terms decisions, template, sample proposal.
Never invent prices, percentages, policies or claims about our kitchen.
If something is missing, ask me. For every enquiry: restate the brief in
bullets, recommend one package plus one alternative, fill the template,
show every Includes item next to a pricing row, then list assumptions and
questions. British English, plain words.Each enquiry then follows the same six steps: paste the client's email into a new chat in the Project, read the filled draft, rebuild the total in a spreadsheet, copy the text into your own Word or Google Docs file, add the contact details you kept out of the prompt, and export a PDF. If you build in Word, OpenAI's release notes list a ChatGPT add-in for Word (September 2026) that works from a sidebar on all plans, subject to plan token limits. It helps with wording and headings. Keep the numbers in your spreadsheet.
ChatGPT cannot collect a signature or a deposit. The acceptance block can be a typed "I accept Option A" reply, a signature box in your document tool, or the quote-acceptance feature in your invoicing software, and the deposit goes out as an ordinary invoice. Dedicated proposal tools add signing, view tracking and payment links in one place, and they become worth a look once you send enough proposals to lose track of who has opened what. For a smaller volume, the comparison of catering quote software shows whether your current tools already cover it.
Flexing it for a wedding, a drinks reception and a repeat client
The same nine sections stretch to other jobs with small changes. Three examples, all illustrative.
A wedding for 80
Celebration Buffet at $42 x 80 guests is $3,360. The package's one server per 25 guests covers three servers for 80 guests. If you decide the day needs a fourth for the top table and drinks, that is an extra row, 6 hours x $38 = $228, and glassware and linen hire adds a row of $380. The total is $3,968. The payment schedule changes from deposit and balance to three steps of 25%, 50% and 25%: $992, $1,984 and $992, which add back to $3,968. New sections appear (a tasting, a day timeline, what you need from the venue), and the wedding catering proposal tutorial covers those.
A drinks reception priced by the piece
Per-head pricing is the wrong unit for canapés. Ask ChatGPT to switch the pricing basis: "Price by the piece, minimum four pieces a guest, six pieces recommended." Six pieces at $2.40 is $14.40 a head, so 60 guests come to $864. The minimum protects you from the client who orders one tray and expects a reception.
A repeat client
An office that wants lunch every Thursday needs a standing order, not a one-off proposal. The terms change: a four-week menu rotation, the price held for six months, 28 days' notice to change numbers by more than 20%, and monthly invoicing with the client's order reference on each invoice. Four lunches a month for 25 guests at $31 is $3,100 a month. For the wording that wins that kind of account, see corporate catering proposals and follow-ups.
Seven checks before the PDF reaches the client
- For every item in an Includes line, find its pricing row. A promise with no row is unpriced labour or food.
- Rebuild the total in a spreadsheet from your price sheet. The two figures must match to the cent.
- Tick each term against a row in your decisions table, and delete any term with no row.
- Check every date against a calendar: the event day, the balance date, the final-numbers date and the quote expiry.
- Compare names, headcount and dietary counts with the client's original email.
- Have the head chef read the allergen sentence aloud.
- Open the PDF on a phone. The pricing table should fit the screen, because the client may open it there first.
A month in, three simple tallies tell you whether the template works: how long a proposal takes from enquiry to send, how many times a client replies asking what a line includes, and how many prices you corrected after sending. The last should be zero. Each reply that asks "what does this include?" is a sentence missing from the template, so add the answer to the package description and the next client will not need to ask. The guide to catching made-up figures in AI-drafted proposals goes further on the arithmetic side, and menu planning and shopping lists picks up where an accepted proposal leaves off.
Questions caterers ask before sending an AI-built proposal
Can ChatGPT work out the totals for me?
It can lay out the table and write the formulas, and it will usually multiply correctly. That is what makes the occasional dropped line hard to spot. Treat every total as unchecked until you have rebuilt it in a spreadsheet from your own price sheet. If the two figures differ, the spreadsheet wins, and the difference tells you which row went missing.
Do I need a paid ChatGPT plan to build this?
No. Projects are listed on every individual plan, and the Free plan holds five files per project, enough for a price sheet, packages, terms, a template and a sample proposal. Free limits messages with uploads, so a caterer sending several proposals a day may prefer Plus at $20 a month. Check the plan page for current limits before you rely on one.
Is it safe to put client details into the prompt?
Keep phone numbers, email addresses and street addresses out. A first name or company, the date, the headcount and the dietary counts are all the draft needs, and you add contact details in your own document afterwards. Consumer plans have a privacy switch that stops chats being used for training, and business plans do not train on business content by default.
What if the client cannot give me a headcount yet?
Quote a per-head price with a minimum number, and show two totals in the same table: one at the low end of their range and one at the high end. State the date on which final numbers lock, and say that the balance is worked out from the figure you hold on that date.
Further reads
- Catering Software for Small Business: Free Options and AI Extras — Free options for quoting and signing before you pay for proposal software.
- Catering Event Checklist: Build the Run Sheet From One Brief With AI — Turn the same accepted brief into a run sheet for the day.
- How Caterers Use AI to Quote Events and Plan Menus — See where proposals sit among quoting and menu planning.
- How to Write Event Proposals With AI in Half the Time — A broader event-proposal workflow to borrow from.
- AI Proposal Mistakes That Cost You the Job — The proposal errors that lose jobs, from tone to wrong figures.
- Can AI Write a Catering Tender Response? What to Keep Confidential — Answer a formal tender brief without leaking confidential details.
- Can ChatGPT Draft a Personal Chef Contract? Clauses to Check — What ChatGPT can draft in a personal chef agreement, and the cancellation, allergy, grocery and insurance clauses a solicitor should check before signing.
- Travel Proposal Template: Build a Client-Ready Trip PDF With AI — A five-block method for building a travel proposal PDF with AI, with prompts, sample outputs, a worked price page and a reusable master.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: OpenAI help pages (Projects, and the ChatGPT release notes for ChatGPT for Word) and the ChatGPT pricing page, checked 28 October 2026. Every price, percentage and term in the examples is illustrative; set your own.