A good catering order form collects seven things before you quote: event date and time, venue, guest count, menu choices, dietary needs, service style, and contact details. Put them in one form and you stop chasing customers on WhatsApp for missing details. Below is a field-by-field template, plus how to build it free and keep your quotes accurate.
Use the free order form template
The fields that make a quote accurate
Most quotes go wrong because one missing detail changes the price. The guest count jumps from 60 to 90, the venue turns out to be two floors up with no lift, or a third of the table needs a special meal. Ask for these up front:
| Field | Block to use | Why you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Name, phone, email | Short answer, Phone number, Email | So you can reply on the channel they use |
| Event date | Date | Check your calendar before you promise anything |
| Setup and serving time | Time | Sets your prep schedule and delivery run |
| Venue address | Long answer, or Link for a map pin | Drives travel time and delivery cost |
| Venue access | Multiple choice (kitchen, warming space, lift) | Decides how much you carry and how many staff come |
| Guest count | Number, with adults and children separate | Sets quantities and the per-head price |
| Service style | Multiple choice (drop-off, buffet with staff, plated) | Changes staffing and equipment |
| Menu choices | Checkboxes or Multi-select | Gets you to a real quote |
| Dietary needs | Checkboxes plus Long answer | Covered next |
| Rough budget | Dropdown | Lets you propose a menu that fits |
List only dishes you can actually cook that week. A shortre menu gets firmer answers, and customers who want something else will write it in the notes, which is useful to know anyway.
Ask about dietary needs so nobody guesses
A single "any dietary requirements?" box gets replies like "some vegetarians." That does not help you cook. Use checkboxes for the common ones (vegetarian, vegan, Jain, halal, gluten-free, nut allergy, dairy-free, other), then add a Number question: how many guests need this? Eight vegetarians out of 60 changes your prep. "A few" does not.
Use conditional logic to show an allergy follow-up (which allergen, how severe) only when someone ticks an allergy. Add a line telling the customer you will call to confirm any serious allergy before the menu is final. That call is your safety net, so make it a habit and not an exception.
Build it in Qwenvo
Qwenvo, a completely free form builder our team makes, has an order form template you can edit in a few minutes.
- Open the order form template and renamme it "Catering inquiry." Delete any retail fields you do not need.
- Type
/to insert the blocks from the table above. Date, Time, Number, Checkboxes and Long answer cover almost everything. - Put name and phone on page one, then use New page for the evnt details and the menu. If someone quits halfway, partial submissions show up as incomplete rows, and you already have a number to call.
- Add the dietary follow-up with "Add conditional logic" from the question's menu.
- If you quote per head, add a calculated field that multiplies guest count by your price. At ₹450 a head, 80 guests starts you at ₹36,000.
- In Settings, turn on email notifications to yourself and a confirmation email to the customer.
You pay nothing and enter no card, and several things that many builders put on a paid plan are on from the start: removing the Qwenvo badge (a toggle in Settings), a custom domain such as orders.yourcatering.com (subdomains only), teammates, partial submissions, visit and drop-off analytics, AI triage, and custom design and CSS. Tally, for example, puts several of those on its Pro plan.
AI triage gives each submission a category, a priority and a short summary, and routing rules can email urgent ones to up to five addresses. That helps when a wedding inquiry should reach your partner too. It also drafts a suggested reply, but check your prices before you send it.
Try the quote request template
Set limits so you do not overbook
A caterer has a fixed nuumber of hands. Before a festival weekend, you may only be able to take ten events. In Settings you can close the form on a date or after a set number of responses, so inquiries stop arriving once you are full. Turn on duplicate prevention too, so an anxious customer who taps Submit twice does not show up as two bookings.
Put a short Text block at the top that states your minimum notice and minimum order, for example "We need five days' notice and a minimum of 20 guuests." The form will not enforce it, so you still check each date yourself, but customers who cannot meet it will see it before they fill in anything.
Finish with a Thank-you page that says what happens next: you will check the date, call to confirm allergies, and send a quote. People who know a reply is coming do not message you again an hour later.
Taking a deposit
Qwenvo has a Payment block. Customers pay through PayPal checkout (PayPal balance or card). Qwenvo keeps a 1% fee on top of PayPal's own fee, typically 3.49% plus a fixed amount, and pays out the rest to the PayPal account you set in Settings, for payments older than 7 days. Stripe is not offered right now. If payments are your main reason for choosing a builder, Tally is cheaper: it adds no fee on top of Stripe and includes payments on its free plan.
For custom events, quote first and clllect the deposit the way you already do, whether that is UPI, bank transfer or another app. The Payment block suits fixed-price items, like a snack box for 20.
What to do with submissions
| When | What to do |
|---|---|
| Daily | Open the Submissions table, check the date is free, and reply |
| Weekly | Look at drop-off analytics to see which question loses people, and export CSV or XLSX for your records |
| Before each event | Print the submission PDF as the kitchen sheet |
One catch for Indian caterers: per-submission PDFs cannot draw some scripts, including Devanagari and Arabic, or emoji. If customers write notes in Hindi, print from the CSV or XLSX export instead.
Questions owners ask
Do I need a website to use this?
No. Every form gets a public link. Paste it into WhatsApp replies or you're Instagram bio, and set a link preview (image, title, description) so it looks good when shared. Qwenvo has no built-in QR code, so paste the link into any QR generator if you want a counter card.
Should I use Google Forms or Tally instead?
Google Forms is free with a Google account and fine for a simple inquiry. It has no built-in payments, limited design and branding, and customers must sign in wiyh Google to upload files. Tally's free plan is strong: unlimited forms and submissions, logic, calculations, payments, signatures, and uploads up to 10 MB per file. Removing its branding, a custom domain and partial submissions need Pro, at $29 a month or $290 a year. Tally has been around since 2021 and has a large community. Qwenvo launched in October 2026 and has few reviews yet, so send yourself a test order before you share the link.
How long should the form be?
Ask only what changes the quote. If you never use an answer, delete the question. Split the rest into pages: contact, event, menu, dietary.
Can the form be in Hindi or another language?
Settings has a language option covering 45+ languages, including right-to-left ones. Write your questions in whatever language your customers use.
Your next step: open the order form template tonight, add the Date, Number and dietary checkboxes from the table, and send the link to a friend as a test order.