My free catering food calculator makes life easy!
Watch the quick above where I calculate how much food is needed to feed 200 guests in seconds! Written by a restaurant marketing consultant.
I see a lot of people who are new to catering asking questions about how much food to bring for a catering or how to calculate food quantities for their event. Or if you want to learn how to calculate food portions for catering head here.
Well look no further, take the guesswork out and use our free catering food calculator!
How to use my food quantity calculator for catering estimates
For each category simply enter the number of guests that you are serving and the form will calculate the food quantities you will need for your catering event.
Keep in mind I have included a 10% buffer, this is helpful for buffet catering since the guests will be serving themselves. This should help with your food cost formula as well.
For entrees and sides, you will also need to select from the drop-down menu whether you want the form to calculate by weight, piece (entree only) or volume (sides only). The form will then output your quantities as pounds, pieces or gallons.
I hope you find this catering estimate calculator useful and if you have any questions please let me know in the comment section below!
Get my catering calculator free!
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FAQs about our food catering calculator
This calculator can help you estimate the amount of food needed for a buffet catering or a plated meal as well. You may want to add a 10% buffer for buffet catering.
The calculator can be used for anything from a southern BBQ catering calculator to an Indian catering food calculator. You just need to determine how you want your units to be listed.
As you can see in the food calculator worksheet, there is a spot for beverages. This is the total amount you would need for your event, so if you have multiple beverages, just divide the total by how many types you have.
Wow! This is perfect for planning events! My family has a reunion every year and it’s always a hassle just to get people to the front door of a venue, half the time. I’m a sucker for calculators and taking figure notes, so this looks very handy to me. Are these commonly used in the food industry nowadays? If not, I feel like they should be. This would certainly make things easier for beginner planners.
Hi Dawn, these are pretty standard formulas for the catering industry. At least in our restaurants, we use these everyday and they have served us well, giving us just a enough food so the customer almost always has leftovers and we don’t run out of anything. I’m glad you liked our catering food calculator!
Hi Jeremy,
What a great feature.
I already sent it to my friend that owns a restaurant, and he loved it.
I told him to leave you a comment if it helped him.
Thanks.
Yes that would be great, thanks for sharing our food quantity calculator with your friend!
Hey Jeremy, this is great. There are so many things you could plan with this. I don’t own a restaurant but I do know some people that own a catering business. I will pass this info on. I could of used this when I got married all those years ago. Great stuff Thanks.
Thanks Lindsay I would greatly appreciate you sharing this with your friends. If they don’t yet use catering software, please have them check out this review of the one we use. It has helped us grow our catering sales tremendously.
I like this new scientific way of managing a restaurant !
Big up for the hardwork (y)
Hi Kori, yes breaking down the food calculation with a formula is much easier to come up with the needed quantities for your catering event. Thanks for stopping by!