Free tool · Food quantities
How much food to make for your guest count
The short answer: plan about 4–6 oz of cooked protein per guest for a plated meal and 6–8 oz for a buffet, 4–6 oz of each starch or vegetable, a cup of side salad, one or two rolls, and 4–6 passed appetizers per guest per hour. Put in your guest count and menu below and this page turns those per-guest figures into pounds to buy, rolls to order and gallons of water to bring — with every portion as a field you can change to your own.
The defaults are the middle of published catering guidelines, not our invention; the sources are listed under the calculator. Nothing you type leaves this page.
of food in total, about — per guest.
| What | Per guest | For the event | To buy or order |
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Where the numbers come from
The guidelines behind the defaults
Every default is the middle of a range published for food-service buyers, so the page has a sensible starting point before you type anything. None of them is a rule. Your own plate costs and your own crowd are better data than any guideline, which is why each one is a field.
Protein and sides
Plated 4–6 oz, buffet 6–8 oz
Cooked meat or fish per guest, with 4–6 oz each of starch and vegetables, 1 cup of side salad and 1–2 rolls, from the WebstaurantStore catering portion size guide. The same guide puts total buffet food at about half a pound to a pound per guest, which is the sanity check printed above the table.
Appetizers
4–6 passed pieces per hour
Per guest, from the same guide. It is a rate, so a two-hour reception needs twice what a cocktail hour needs, and a reception with no dinner after it needs the full length of the event at that rate.
Drinks and ice
Water, soft drinks, ice
8–10 oz of water per guest per hour, one soft drink or iced tea per guest per hour, and 1–2 lb of ice per guest for drinks alone (not for chilling or displays), also from the WebstaurantStore guide. Alcohol is left out: it has its own licensing and its own arithmetic.
What it does not do
No recipe scaling, no hotel pans
A full pan holds a different number of portions of lasagna than of green beans, so the page stops at weight and count. If you portion by the pan, divide the pounds here by what your own pans hold.
Guidelines for planning only. Food safety — holding temperatures, time out of refrigeration, allergen handling — is set by your local health department, not by a portion chart. If a guest count is not final yet, see how a guarantee date handles the number that changes twice.
Questions
Catering quantities, answered
- How much meat per person for catering?
- A common guideline is 4 to 6 ounces of cooked meat or fish per guest for a plated meal, and 6 to 8 ounces for a buffet or barbecue, because guests serve themselves more generously. That is cooked weight: divide by your cooking yield to get what to buy raw.
- How much food do I need for 100 guests at a buffet?
- With one protein at 7 ounces cooked and two sides at 4 ounces each, plus 10% extra for a self-serve line, that is roughly 48 pounds of cooked protein and 55 pounds of sides, which lands inside the usual half a pound to a pound of total food per guest. Put your own menu into the calculator above for an exact list.
- How many appetizers per person?
- For passed appetizers, 4 to 6 pieces per guest per hour is the usual planning figure. A one-hour cocktail hour before dinner is therefore about 5 pieces per guest; if appetizers are the whole meal, plan more and set the hours to the length of the event.
- How much extra food should a caterer make?
- Many caterers add 10% or more for a self-serve buffet, where the first guests take more than the last, and little or nothing for a plated meal where every portion is counted. It is a field in the calculator because the right number depends on your crowd.
- Does the calculator send my numbers anywhere?
- No. It runs entirely in your browser. The numbers live in the page address, so you can bookmark or share the link, and nothing is stored on a server.
Who made this
Your own ordering and quoting website
These tools are free and stay free. They are made by Catering Deck, which builds websites for small catering kitchens where customers pick a package, change the headcount and see the price move, and you get a built order instead of a question. It costs $200–$300 once and $10–$20 a month, with no commission on orders. We build a demo with your own menu first, so you can see it before deciding anything.