Catering Quantity Calculator

How to estimate food for an event

1. Enter the number of guests.
2. Choose the meal: a full lunch or dinner, a light meal, snacks or high tea, or a feast or buffet spread.
3. Set the share of non-vegetarian guests with the slider. Non-vegetarian dishes are sized for that group only. Vegetarian dishes are sized for every guest, because non-vegetarians eat them too.
4. Read the list of quantities, change any per person figure to suit your menu, and tap Print list to hand it to the caterer or cook.

The portions the calculator starts from

These are typical servings for one adult at a full meal. Every figure can be edited.

A light meal uses 60% of these amounts and snacks or high tea 40%. The feast or buffet option adds 15%, because people take more when they serve themselves from a wide spread.

A worked example

For 100 guests at a full meal with 40% non-vegetarian: rice is 100 × 180 g = 18 kg. Non-veg curry is sized for the 40 non-vegetarian guests, 40 × 200 g = 8 kg, while veg curry is sized for all 100, which is 18 kg. Water comes to 70 litres. The quantities are cooked, ready-to-serve weights. Raw ingredients differ — rice roughly triples in weight as it cooks, so 18 kg of cooked rice is about 6 to 7 kg of raw rice. Leave that conversion to whoever is cooking.

Adjusting for your crowd

• Children eat about half an adult portion. Count two children as one guest.
• More dishes, smaller portions. With five curries on the table nobody takes a full serving of each, so reduce the per-person figure as the menu grows.
• Time of day. A late dinner after a long ceremony is eaten more heartily than a lunch between sessions.
• Weather. In hot weather allow more water and cold drinks and a little less heavy food.
• Regional habits. A rice-eating crowd needs more rice and fewer rotis, and the reverse. Adjust the two together.

Running short versus wasting food

Running out is the worse mistake, so caterers usually round up, and the calculator rounds weights up to the next 100 g. But a large surplus is money thrown away. Ask the caterer what happens to untouched food, keep starters and desserts — which cost the most per person — close to the estimate, and let rice and dal carry the safety margin, since they are the cheapest items to over-order.

These figures are planning estimates, not a guarantee. Put the catering cost into the Event Budget Calculator to see what it does to your cost per guest.