How do you cover cost as the main food for a fundraiser

[LAKE_STATE_BBQ]

I worked with a man who is young -48- has 5 kids still at home and just had a tumor removed from his brain. 

Survival is 0% if 100% of the tumor was successfully removed and up to 14 months if removed with radiation, etc. 

We have been asked to be the food for the fundraiser. How do you go about doing this but making sure your costs are covered?  

Help please we really want to step up and help this family. 

[Minion]

Hey @LAKE_STATE_BBQ 

I've been out of the restaurant business for almost a decade, but I may be able to help, or maybe @ryanwanner @Donnie-M or @MAXSDELI  can hop in as well.

How are tickets being sold for, or how much are they being sold for? Do you happen to have an estimated amount of people or tickets that they plan to sell for the fundraiser?  What type of food do you plan to sell/donate at this fundraiser ?

You could do this a few ways I believe. 

1)Once you figure out what type of food you will offer and compared to a rough estimate of how many people you plan to feed, ou can figure out what costs you will have into that, and have that added into the price of "a ticket" if they are doing that. 

2)Figure out what it is you plan to do for food, and speak with the family asking to cover the costs of the food (to be taken out of the total fundraiser at the end)

3)Donate the food and your time and maybe it can be used as a tax right off?

[Donnie-M]

@LAKE_STATE_BBQ The easiest way to do this and cover costs is to take your last 4 weeks of purchases totaled and divide by your last 4 weeks of sales to get your 4 week rolling average of food cost.  If it is 33% or 40% whatever your number is, take this and just provide a discount of 67% or 60% relatively.

If you need to cover labor, that would be an actual cost item, but generally you eat the labor.  Doing a deep discount is the cleanest way to keep everything and then you can write off the discount as a charitable contribution.  Especially if you just create the new discount just for that event.  If you have to collect payment also, then you would take the total net sales, take that percentage, and then cut a check to the family.

Either way, both are legitimate ways to show a real value donation.