Originally Posted by
glfgd82
I haven't been on for a bit and just saw this. I own a BBQ restaurant and food truck, we do caterings upwards of 1500 people and here is what I put on my catering menus for customers to think about.
1lb of cooked meat will feed 2-3 people, if your doing sandwiches you can do 3 servings per lb (our standard serving is 1/3 lb per sandwich)
Sides are generally broken out by 1/2 and full pan sizes, one 1/2 pan should have 15-20 servings depending on the guests, again know your crowd and how they eat, a group full of beer drinking guys will eat differently than an office party usually.
Cooked vs Raw- Pork butt will lose between 40-50% of it's weight once cooked, keep this in mind when figuring how much you want to cook to feed your crowd. Chicken will lose approximately 20% of its weight as a general figure. I have gotten my yields up over time with new techniques in cooking and new equipment, I average about 75% yield for pork and brisket now and closer to 90% for chicken, but it all varies on time/temp and style of cooker.
40-50 people I would break it down like this:
Meat lbs: 25 cooked goal - 13lbs each approx = 26lbs pork and 15lbs chicken raw these are the numbers you have to hit minimum
Sides: 1 full pan of each side will be enough, especially if there will be other options available from others bringing items.
Vegetarian options: We do not do strictly vegetarian options currently because I do not have a smoker I can dedicate to it. While I'm not a vegetarian, I respect others choice and would not cook veggie options in my cookers which have meat cooked in them. I understand vegetarians are not as strict as vegan, I just rather not create a headache for myself so I do not go down that road at the moment. Most of our sides are vegetarian so we just promote that. I have other friends in the business who smoke jackfruit and offer that for vegetarian guests, it goes over very well and is actually quite good, when done right it's a similar product to pulled pork, minus the delicious pork part lol.