Expert: Teri Davis Newman - 2/10/2009

Question
Hi Teri, I'm hosting a sit down dinner for about 70 persons. I'm having a bit of trouble estimating how much ingredients to buy for each dish and how do I estimate the servings per person....eg. how many persons will eat fish and how many will eat chicken and shrimp. What ratio do I work with? My menu is as follows:Garlic and herb roasted red potatoes and stuffed spinach manicotti shells. Brandied shrimp, roasted game hens and talapia or flounder in a roasted red pepper sauce. Garlic snow or sugar snap peas for the vegetable and a orzo and feta salad. For dessert I'm thinking red velvet cake but I would like to use a cookie cutter to make personalized servings. How much cake do I bake to serve 70 people.

Answer
You are not going to have time to make personalized cake servings for 70 people unless you have a small army of help. You have too many items to choose from.  Caterers do one dish for everyone or they send out little cards (chicken or beef) and find out because there IS NO FORMULA that will tell you how many servings of each you will need so you either have to make 70 servings of each dish and throw away a lot of expensive food or you cut your menu choices down to ONE and that's what you serve.  It's a catered dinner, not a restaurant menu--they get what you are serving--like dinner at Mom's!
Here's the rule of catering as to how much you will need per person:
7 ounces of cooked meat entree
4 ounces of each side dish up to 3
3 ounces of salad greens
1 4 ounce dessert serving
6-8 appetizer bites per person
16 oz of non-alcoholic beverage
2 oz of chips per person
1 oz of dip per person
Multiply the ounces times the number of guests and then divide by 16 to give you pounds of food and the beverage by 128 to give you the number of gallons of beverage you will need.