Special events not contained within the regular menu offering can be planned and coordinated with the catered event function. The customer, date, menu, number of patrons, and price are entered into the system. The catered event function pre-costs the menu at last or replacement purchase price, and then calculates and stores the amount of raw food required to produce the menu for the number of customers specified. Raw food amounts required are used by the purchase and accountability functions. The catered event requirement is stored for the production function, so production documents can be produced for the day of the event.