A continental drop-off at 7am and a staffed brunch with an omelet station are not the same job, and they should never carry the same per-person number. Here are working ranges for both, the portion counts behind them, and the math to land your own price.
The short answer. Breakfast and brunch catering commonly runs:
| Setup | What's included | Per person |
|---|---|---|
| Continental drop-off | Pastries, fruit, coffee. Delivered, ready to serve | $19–$31 |
| Hot breakfast buffet, staffed | Eggs, a breakfast meat, potatoes, setup and service | $26.50–$44 |
| Brunch buffet with a live station | Omelets or carving, four accompaniments, staffed | $31–$52 |
| Plated brunch, full service | Coursed, served at the table | $43.50–$71 |
Those ranges come from the open 2026 US market-range table behind our catering pricing calculator, before tax, rentals, and gratuity. Where you land inside a band is decided by portions and staffing.
The portion math (breakfast is cheap food and expensive hours)
Breakfast flips the usual catering cost shape. The ingredients are inexpensive, so the number is carried by labor, timing, and packaging rather than by protein. Plan on:
- Pastries and breads: 1.5 to 2 pieces per person for a continental spread. Guests take two when the pieces are small.
- Eggs: about two per person for a scramble, more for an omelet station where a guest watches theirs being made.
- Breakfast meat: 2 to 3 oz per person cooked. Bacon shrinks by roughly half, so buy close to double.
- Fruit: about 4 oz per person as a side, more when it is doing the work of a second course.
- Coffee: figure 1.5 cups per person for a morning event and plan a second urn for anything past two hours.
The expensive part is the clock. A breakfast that has to be hot at 7:30am means a kitchen call time before 5am, and a 5am start is a premium shift no matter what the food cost says. Price the hours honestly (the method is at Catering labor cost: the % solo caterers forget) or the job pays you less than a dinner half its size.
Build the per-person price
Cost your plate, then apply the rule the industry runs on: food should be about 28–35% of price (full explainer at How to calculate catering food cost per plate).
Say a hot breakfast plate (eggs, a meat, potatoes, a pastry, fruit, coffee, consumables) costs you $6.00 per person:
$6.00 ÷ 0.30 = $20 per person → $1,000 for 50.
That is food-cost healthy, and for a drop-off it is close to the finished number. Then adjust for service:
- Continental drop-off: minimal labor on site. You are pricing food, packaging, and a very early drive.
- Hot buffet: add the chafers, the setup window, and staff who arrive before the guests.
- Live station: a station is one cook per roughly 40 guests for the whole service window. That is a body, not a garnish.
Coffee, rentals, and the lines that vanish
Breakfast has its own quiet margin leaks:
- Coffee service. Urns, cups, lids, stirrers, cream, sweeteners, and a second run for refills. It is the single most under-priced line in morning catering.
- Disposables. Morning events lean disposable, and a compostable plate-and-cup set costs real money across 100 people.
- Early delivery. A 6am load-out is a shift premium and a second driver, not a rounding error.
- Hold time. Eggs and potatoes have a short window before they are sad. Extra pans and a hot box are the price of not serving sad eggs.
Each side dish you add moves the per-person number by about $1.50–$3 in the same market table, which is why a four-item brunch buffet prices above a two-item breakfast even with the same protein.
Regional and seasonal reality
Two things move breakfast pricing past the plate:
- Your market. Wage floors, delivery distance, and what corporate clients already pay locally vary a lot. Price to your own costs, not to a national average.
- The calendar. Brunch demand clusters on weekend mornings, Mother's Day, and the holiday season. Peak dates carry peak pricing (see Holiday party catering pricing, per person).
Present it like a menu
On the client's copy: total, per person, and the items named the way a guest would want to read them. "Buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy" sells; "Hot item #2" does not. Keep your cost breakdown on your side of the table (see Catering quote template that wins jobs).
Package tiers that make the quote easy
Breakfast tiers almost write themselves, and tiers make a corporate client choose up instead of negotiating down:
- Continental — pastries, fruit, juice, coffee. Drop-off friendly, anchors the low end.
- The hot breakfast — the continental plus eggs, a breakfast meat, and potatoes. The tier most offices pick.
- The brunch — the hot breakfast plus a live station, a second protein, and a sweet course, served by staff.
Add-ons that lift the ticket cheaply: a juice or cold-brew package, a yogurt-and-granola bar, or an extra half hour of coffee service. Present the three side by side and most clients land in the middle, which is where the margin is comfortable.
Price your breakfast menu
The ranges above are the neighborhood. The catering pricing calculator dials them in for your service style, headcount, and region in a few taps, and it works from the same 2026 US market table this article quotes. For your exact number from your vendor prices, labor, and target margin, cost a plate in the food-cost & margin calculator, which runs the exact math CaterKit runs.