Planning a menu and a station line-up for 100 guests

A hundred guests is small enough that people can see the food being made and large enough that a queue forms if you get the layout wrong. It is also the size where hosts most often order too much, because the instinct is to add another dish rather than another counter.

The shape of the menu

Most events, whatever the occasion, follow the same shape: something to drink and something small to eat with it; starters, some of them made in front of guests; the main courses with the breads and the rice; then dessert. What changes is the weight given to each part. A morning function puts most of the effort into the first two. A reception puts it into the starters and the dessert counter, because people are standing and talking rather than sitting down to eat.

Decide the shape before the dishes. It is easier to cut a menu that has a structure than one that is a list.

Counters at this size

At a hundred guests, two or three live counters usually do more for the evening than six dishes added to a buffet. A chaat counter takes the pressure off the start. A griddle — dosa, uttapam, paratha — carries a morning function on its own. A dessert counter at the end gives people a reason to stay rather than drift off after the main course.

How many counters your event can actually run is a venue question, not a menu question. It depends on where they can stand, what power is near them, and whether guests can move between them without crossing the service path.

What to ask about quantities

Quantities follow the confirmed guest count, so the useful questions are about that count rather than about grams per head.

• What count is the proposal based on, and when does it have to be final?
• What happens if more people arrive than we confirmed?
• How many children are in that number, and are they counted the same way?
• Which dishes are made in batch and which are cooked to order through the service?
• What is written into the proposal about all of the above?

Be wary of a caterer who answers with a portion figure before knowing the menu. The amount of food a hundred people eat depends on how many dishes there are, how long the service runs and what time of day it is.

The dishes your family expects

Whatever else goes on the menu, the dishes people came for should go on it first. Write them down and hand them over at the enquiry stage. It is much easier to build a menu around three fixed dishes than to discover them at the tasting.

What it costs

RASA menus run from ₹1,200 to ₹3,000 a plate for the food, before GST, transport and crockery. At a hundred guests that arithmetic is ₹1,20,000 to ₹3,00,000 for one function. Smaller events sit higher in that range than large ones, because the same counter, the same cook and the same setup serve fewer plates.

Read next

• How pricing works
• The live stations
• House parties and birthdays