The Party Planner: Cooking for a Crowd (2024)

FAQs

How to calculate food for a crowd? ›

The overall rule that most caterers and party planners use is to calculate a pound of food per person, and a half pound per child. Professionals typically recommend breaking it down further from there: Aim for 2 to 4 ounces of appetizers per person—think 5 to 6 bites.

On average, plan for each adult to consume about 1 pound of food total (not including dessert). Count on children to consume about a ½ pound. Remember; the more options you have, the less you need of each.

Generally, an adult will eat about 1lb of food per seating. So if you are serving 4 portions of food, you need about 1/4 lb per person. If you are offering 3 portions of food, you need about 1/3 lb per person of each item.

How many bites per person? If you're hosing 25 -35 guests, plan 3-4 bites per person if a full dinner is to be served afterwards, or 5-7 bites per person if a lighter meal will be served. If you're hosting a party of 50, then you can offer 6 to 9 different items.

For a party of 50, you will therefore require 250-400. If there is a meal to be served, then this number can be cut back to 3-4 per person, per hour, which therefore equates to 150-200 appetizers required.

Once you've decided on your event of choice, here's how to calculate how much food you'll need. Aim to provide around 6-8 courses of small bite size food per person. Each course should have enough for 1-1.5 pieces of food per person.

The number of full trays of food needed for 100 guests can vary depending on the type of food and serving style, but a rough estimate would be around 10-12 trays.

Once you've decided on your event of choice, here's how to calculate how much food you'll need. Aim to provide around 6-8 courses of small bite size food per person. Each course should have enough for 1-1.5 pieces of food per person.

For a plated meal, you would typically need around 140-170 grams of meat or fish per person. So, for 50 people, you would require approximately 7-8.5 kilograms of the main course. If you're serving a buffet-style meal, you can estimate slightly less, 110-140 grams per person.