Catering calculator

Start from a sample and change it: barbecue buffet for 100, taco bar for 50, plated wedding dinner for 150, cocktail reception for 80 or pasta lunch for 40 in foil pans.

How much a steam table pan holds

A pan's printed capacity is to the brim, and nobody serves from a pan filled to the brim. Vollrath lists its full-size 2½ inch pan at 8.3 quarts (7.9 L) brimful, and its catalogue sheet gives the half-size pan 4.3 quarts (4.1 L); Cambro gives its own full pan a holding capacity of 8.9 quarts (8.5 L), and retailer charts round to 9 quarts. No US maker we read prints a working fill. The one official pattern is in USDA's recipes for school kitchens, which put a gallon or a little under in a pan of this size for anything scooped: a gallon (3.8 L) of baked beans, a gallon and two cups (4.3 L) of macaroni and cheese, 3½ quarts (3.3 L) of mashed potatoes, each pan planned for 25 servings. Layered lasagna is the exception: the same pan is filled nearly to the top and cut 5 x 5. The calculator rounds the scooped fill to a gallon, which is 32 half-cup (120 ml) servings, so at 200 guests it counts 7 pans of a side where USDA's own recipes would use 8.

Only the first row's fill follows USDA. Giving the half pan and the foil pans the same share of their printed capacity is our carry-over, and so is the weight of meat in a pan: USDA's pulled pork recipe lists 6 lb 8 oz (2.9 kg) of pulled pork as 2 quarts 2 cups (2.4 L), which is 10.4 oz (295 g) to the cup, and we use that for every meat, sliced ones included. Bone-in chicken is left out of the pan count. The foil capacities are Handi-Foil's deep full-size pan (343 fl oz or 10.1 L, 3 3/16 inches or 8 cm deep) and its deep half-size pan (120 fl oz or 3.5 L), as a retailer lists them; neither says whether that is to the brim. A European Gastronorm GN 1/1 container has nearly the same footprint, 530 x 325 mm, and WebstaurantStore's pan guide says the two can generally be interchanged.

Published serving counts for a pan are far apart because each assumes its own portion and its own fill. GoFoodservice says an 8-quart (7.6 L) chafer pan serves 20 to 30 guests a main at about a cup (240 ml) each and 40 to 55 a side. Four restaurant catering menus we read print a full tray as serving 10 to 12, 15 to 20, 18 to 20 and about 30 people, with no pan depth or portion given. USDA's lasagna is a school lunch portion, for ages 6 to 18. So the calculator shows the portion beside every pan count.

The line count is a caterer's rule of thumb, not a measurement. Taste Catering, answering Style Me Pretty in 2013, recommends one line for every 50 guests (her example: two buffets for 100) and no more than five items on it. Ellen's Kitchen, a long-running site for volunteer cooks, counts a table served down both sides as two lines, allows about 2 running feet (60 cm) of table for each food container, and is stricter on the first point: a double-sided line of its own for every fifty people. We found no published count of guests served a minute. For the mains alone, GoFoodservice plans one full-size chafing dish for every 15 to 25 guests.

A full-size chafing dish holds 8 to 9 quarts (7.6 to 8.5 L) by WebstaurantStore's guide, and one frame takes a full pan, two half pans or three third pans (GoFoodservice). It holds food hot; it does not cook or reheat it. WebstaurantStore's instructions put an inch (2.5 cm) of hot water in the water pan and warm it for 20 minutes before the food goes in; GoFoodservice says about 2 inches (5 cm) and 10 to 15 minutes. Fuel is GoFoodservice's rule: a can for each chafer every 2 to 3 hours, plus 20% spare. Sterno sells its ethanol gel as a 2¼-hour can and its wick cans as 2, 4, 5 and 6-hour ones. Many full-size chafers have two fuel holders, which is the second figure in the table. A soup is counted apart, as a kettle or a round chafer.

Buffet or plated: which takes more food?

The sources do not agree, and the calculator has to pick. WebstaurantStore, writing for caterers, plans 4 to 6 oz (115 to 170 g) of cooked meat a person for a plated meal and 6 to 8 oz (170 to 225 g) for self-serve events or buffets. The Old Farmer's Almanac adds 10 to 15% for self-serve. Cooking For Crowds For Dummies, co-written by a caterer, says a buffet figures at a lower serving a person, because buffets typically feature more side dish items than a plated meal does. Nicolet College's catering textbook prints 6 to 8 oz for both, and WebstaurantStore's own protein guide gives weddings and formal events 8 to 10 oz (225 to 285 g) and casual gatherings and buffets 6 to 8, without saying cooked or raw. We use the first pair of figures because they are stated as cooked weight and come with both services side by side. No source we read gives a number for family style or for food stations, so family style here uses the buffet amounts, which is our choice.

With two mains the calculator splits the guests evenly between them, as the textbook does ("2 options: estimate 3-4 oz each"). Allrecipes suggests a cushion on top, a fifth pound on four (450 g on 1.8 kg) for ten people, since many guests try both, and Ellen's Kitchen allows 5 oz (140 g) of one meat and 3 oz (85 g) of the other because guests offered a choice "take larger portions and usually some of each". The calculator adds no cushion of its own, so with two mains buy toward the top of each range. Hors d'oeuvres for a reception are the textbook's totals, which match the caterer Jim Wharton's 12 to 15 bites instead of a meal as Here Comes The Guide quotes him.

Servers and bartenders: what staffing companies publish

The staff lines in the result are ranges across three companies that sell event staff or scheduling software. None cites a study, and they disagree by more than double on a plated dinner.

The first row is USDA's Cooking for Groups, a guide for volunteers feeding family reunions, church dinners and community gatherings, and the FDA's Serving Up Safe Buffets. Both say to replace an empty dish with a fresh one rather than topping it up; the FDA keeps back-up hot dishes in an oven at 200 to 250°F (93 to 121°C) and warns that some warmers only hold 110 to 120°F (43 to 49°C). Food cooked ahead and cooled is reheated to 165°F (74°C) before it goes on the line. For food cooked ahead, the same guide has volunteers divide it into shallow containers to chill, slice roasts and layer the slices, and cool soups and stews in an ice water bath, stirring; never partly cook food to finish later; reheat in an oven set no lower than 325°F (163°C); and carry hot food at 140°F (60°C) or above, wrapped in an insulated container, and cold food at 40°F (4°C) or below in a cooler with ice or gel packs. The second row is the FDA Food Code 2026, a model that binds a business only where its state or local authority has adopted it; it also wants cooked food cooled from 135 to 70°F (57 to 21°C) within 2 hours and to 41°F (5°C) within 6 in all, and lists a depth of no more than 2 inches (5 cm) among its cooling methods. The third is GOV.UK's food hygiene guide for businesses; the Food Standards Agency's advice for community and charity events, which applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, gives volunteers the same 4 hours for chilled food, 2 in extremely hot weather.

Catering is a regulated business. The model Food Code counts a catering operation as a food establishment whether or not the food is charged for, and requires a permit to run one; it leaves a home kitchen out only for food that needs no temperature control, such as a charity bake sale. Oversight sits with state and local health departments, so ask yours before catering from a home kitchen, paid or not. In the UK you register with your local authority to run a food business. On allergens, the FDA lists nine major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame. The Food Code, in a provision added after a 2020 recommendation, has a permit holder tell customers in writing when a major allergen is an ingredient in unpackaged food; it binds only where an edition that carries it has been adopted. Food businesses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland must give allergen information for 14 allergens on food that is not prepacked. This page is not legal advice.

Where the numbers come from

Portions per person are WebstaurantStore's guide to catering portion sizes (meat by service, pasta, green salad, sandwiches, rolls, cookies, coffee, drinks and ice), its protein guide (ground beef) and the section "How Much Food to Prepare" of Nicolet College's open textbook Catering (half a cup of each side, soup at a buffet, hors d'oeuvres, two mains split evenly, 5 to 10% extra guests). Raw weights use the yield factors in USDA's Food Buying Guide for Child Nutrition Programs, which for beef and pork count cooked lean meat only and so run a little below what barbecue writers quote; turkey breast uses the row without skin, and chicken breast the row for boneless breast pieces. The fruit salad, the pie, the butter, and the lettuce, green beans and potatoes to buy come from a table for fifty posted by Clay County, Minnesota, and the other salads are checked against it; it prints no credit, and most of its rows match search fragments of the 1989 edition of the textbook Food for Fifty. Sheet cake is Iowa State Extension and Cooking For Crowds For Dummies; wine is five glasses to a 750 ml bottle, per Williams-Sonoma, which adapts Ray Foley's bar guide. The sandwich platter rule is ezCater's and Fooda's.

Ours: the family-style amounts and one platter of each dish for every table of 8; sizing bone-in chicken thighs by their cooked meat, where WebstaurantStore's protein guide says one to two thighs a person; the fill of every pan but the full-size one; every meat at pulled pork's 10.4 oz (295 g) to the cup; an even split between three or more mains; reading WebstaurantStore's pasta figure as cooked weight and its meat-sauce figure as covering taco meat; a half pan of lasagna as 12 pieces; one double-sided table for every two serving lines, the chafing dish count, and fuel at the short end of GoFoodservice's 2 to 3 hours. Plate Artists cooked and measured nothing for this page. The tables are a guide: know your crowd, and keep notes after each event, as the textbook tells its students to.

Cooking for a smaller party at home? The party food calculator works from a caterer's tables for home hosts, and the charcuterie board calculator weighs the cheese and meat for the board that goes out first.