How much food do you need for a crowd?
Cooking for 10 people is easy to eyeball. Cooking for 60 is not. Too little and the last guests in line go hungry. Too much and you are eating leftovers for a week. These calculators turn standard serving sizes into amounts you can shop for: pounds and kilograms, boxes, heads of lettuce and pieces.
Each one asks for three things:
- How many guests you are feeding.
- How you are serving it. Pasta as the main dish needs about 3– 4 oz of dry pasta per person, but only about 2 oz as a side (The Reluctant Gourmet). Appetizers before dinner are 4–6 pieces per guest, far fewer than when they are the whole meal (The Takeout, 2024).
- A buffer. We start at 10% for second helpings and big appetites, and you can change it.
The calculators
- Pasta per person: dry weight to buy, number of 1-lb boxes and the cooked amount.
- Rice per person: uncooked cups and pounds, plus how much cooked rice you will get.
- Salad per person: cups of greens and how many heads of romaine, iceberg or leaf lettuce to buy. A side salad here is 2 cups of greens, one MyPlate cup of vegetables (NMSU Extension, 2018).
- Appetizers per person: total pieces, how many kinds to make and how many of each.
Building a full menu
Most party menus mix a few of these. If you serve pasta and rice side by side, guests take some of each, so you can trim both a little. Main proteins like chicken, beef or fish are not covered here yet, so plan those with your recipe or your butcher.
Hiring a caterer instead? The catering calculators estimate cost per guest and help you tip the team. Hosting outdoors? The event setup tools size your tent and dance floor.
Every amount links to its source. See how we calculate for the full list.