Wedding Cakes & Food Forum

Anyone with buffet catering experience? Advice needed

So, we're doing a semi-DIY buffet reception.  We're not cooking the food ourselves, we're hiring a third party to take care of setup/cleanup/maintaining the buffet table, but the dishes themselves are not all coming from the same place.  Coordinating how much to get from each place is our job.  So how does one figure out how much of everything to get? 

For instance, if we're having three different entree choices and five different sides for, say, 60 people, how many servings of each entree and side dish should you put on the buffet?  Also, I know if I'm at a buffet I'm more likely to eat a smaller portion of a couple of choices instead of a large "entree sized" portion of just one choice like you'd get if you had a plated dinner.  So what is a portion size for buffet purposes as opposed to a plated dinner?

I know we'll have some leftover food, and I'm okay with that.  I just don't want to buy twice as much food as we actually need.
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Re: Anyone with buffet catering experience? Advice needed

  • edited December 2011
    Oooh....good questions.   It might help if you came back here with a clicky poll with the different options you'll have (when you've decided) or the options you're considering if you haven't quite decided and see how popular each respective thing will be.  You might need more chicken parmesan and less smoked salmon for the same 60 guests, know what I mean?  I'd do two polls: one for entree choices and one for side dishes. 

    ETA: Also, if you want to get lots and lots of responses to the clicky poll to get a better idea of what will be popular, you should probably post not just here, but also do an extra post (XP) on a higher traffic board like Etiquette, Budget Weddings, or Snarky Brides (not that you're being rude, cheap, or snarky. They are just highly trafficked boards). 

  • edited December 2011
    Good idea on doing some clicky polls.  We'll have to sit down and think about our options a little more and narrow things down.  We're still hashing out the potential menu, although everything we're thinking of is "dressed up comfort food" type stuff.  I've been searching the internet hoping to find some kind of formula for how much total food you need for X amount of people, but everything is either kind of vague or is geared towards all roasted/grilled meat entrees, which isn't really the direction we're wanting to go. 
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  • edited December 2011
    You know how place that cater say "serves 10-15"? For a buffet, I'd probably error on the side of 15. They should be able to help you, though.
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