Per Person or Per Hour

The back door of a restaurant tells you more about a business than the front ever will. Milk crates stacked like bad architecture. A delivery invoice taped to a wall with hope holding it in place. Somewhere in that alley lives the truth about labor, time, and what people think their work is worth.

Private chefs, caterers, and restaurants that take on private events all share a peculiar relationship with time. They sell it. They chase it. They try to fence it in with contracts and clauses. And sooner or later, every operator in this corner of the industry faces the same question: do we charge by the hour, or do we charge by the head?

On the surface, hourly pricing feels virtuous. Especially to chefs. It promises fairness. It suggests discipline. It reassures clients who fear being taken for a ride. In certain situations, it even works. But most of the time, across homes, banquet halls, and buyouts, experience keeps pointing in the same direction. Hourly pricing is often the least effective way to value what we actually do.

That doesn’t mean it’s useless. It means it’s misunderstood.

Let’s start with where per hour makes sense, because pretending otherwise insults the intelligence of anyone who’s ever balanced a P&L.

Hourly pricing works best when scope is unclear or genuinely variable. Think consulting, menu development, staff training, kitchen reorganizations, pop-up concepts still finding their legs. In catering and restaurant private events, hourly models can serve well during load-ins, breakdowns, extended venue access, or events with unpredictable timelines. A wedding that turns into an all-night dance party. A corporate event where speeches breed like rabbits. A gallery opening where the client keeps moving the goalposts.

In these moments, the clock becomes protection. It draws a clean boundary around labor creep. It gives operators a way to say yes without silently absorbing chaos. For restaurants offering off-site events or buyouts, hourly labor add-ons can prevent a profitable night from slipping into a loss because someone decided to linger.

Hourly pricing also benefits younger operations still learning their true costs. Before you know how long prep really takes, before systems tighten, before staffing stabilizes, time-based pricing can act as training wheels. It reveals inefficiencies. It forces awareness. It teaches operators where the leaks are.

But here’s where the model starts to crack.

The core problem with hourly pricing is that it confuses effort with value. Cooking for private clients, catering guests, or hosting a private dining room is not factory work. The most important labor happens before the first apron is tied and long after the last plate leaves the room.

Menu engineering. Vendor relationships. Mental sequencing. Contingency planning. These are not billable hours in an hourly model, yet they determine whether the event sings or collapses into awkward silence and cold lamb.

Hourly pricing also rewards the wrong behavior. Slow work earns more. Clean execution earns less. As teams improve, margins shrink unless rates constantly rise, which clients inevitably resist. Over time, the system quietly punishes professionalism.

Anyone who has run a restaurant knows this tension. You don’t price entrées based on how long they take to cook. You price them based on what they deliver to the guest and what they contribute to the business. A private event is no different. The guest doesn’t care how long the sauce simmered. They care how it tasted, how it landed, how it made them feel in front of their friends or colleagues.

This is where per person pricing earns its keep.

Charging per guest reframes the transaction around experience rather than endurance. It tells the client exactly what they are buying: a complete, intentional hospitality moment for each human in the room. The math becomes cleaner. Food costs align naturally. Staffing levels stabilize. Prep becomes purposeful.

For private chefs, per person pricing restores sanity. The focus shifts from watching the clock to designing a meal that moves. The chef cooks with confidence, not anxiety. For caterers, it simplifies proposals and speeds up sales. Clients understand it instantly. For restaurants hosting private events, per person menus mirror the logic guests already trust from prix fixe dining.

Per person pricing also protects experience. Courses flow because they’re meant to, not because time allows it. Generosity becomes a tool rather than a liability. A surprise bite, a shared dish, a late-night snack—these moments feel like hospitality again, not lost revenue.

Most importantly, per person pricing honors expertise. A veteran chef who executes flawlessly in four hours should not earn less than a novice who needs six. Skill is supposed to compress time. A good pricing model recognizes that compression as value, not loss.

Still, per person pricing isn’t a silver bullet.

It demands rigor. You have to know your numbers. Not guesses. Not vibes. Actual costs. Food, labor, rentals, admin, insurance, spoilage, overtime. For restaurants used to nightly volume smoothing out mistakes, private events remove that safety net. One mispriced dinner can erase a week of profit.

Per person pricing also struggles when events drift beyond their intended shape. That’s why the smartest operators blend models. A per person base, paired with clearly defined hourly overages. A fixed menu price, with time-based extensions. This hybrid approach respects both value and reality.

The mistake isn’t choosing one model over the other. The mistake is defaulting to hourly because it feels safer or more honest. In practice, it often underprices the most important part of the work: judgment.

Private chefs, caterers, and restaurants doing private events occupy a space where trust matters more than mechanics. Clients aren’t buying food alone. They’re buying relief. They’re buying certainty. They’re buying the feeling that someone capable is in charge.

Time is part of that equation, but it isn’t the product.

The best operators understand when to sell minutes and when to sell meaning. They use hourly pricing as a guardrail, not a foundation. They lead with per person value and backstop it with time when the night runs long.

Out back, near those milk crates and delivery slips, that truth feels obvious. Hospitality has always been about making hard work look effortless. Pricing should do the same.

Sell the experience. Protect the labor. And never let the clock become the loudest voice in the room.

Should you be billing per hour or per person? If you are not sure, we can help!

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