How to Plan Food for a (Really) Large Group: Taco Bar Prep for Graduation Party, Wedding, Shower, Etc.

I love a challenge, and although you wouldn’t know it if you visited my house, I can organize an event like nobody’s business (just not the piles of paper that infiltrate my kitchen).

What is the best food to serve for a party…with a few hundred people…on a budget?

Who needs to pay a caterer to prepare that food? I got this!

In the first post in this series, I walked you through all the planning ideas and timelines to prepare for a backyard graduation party: decorations, timing, invites, predicting party guest numbers, and the budget.

Everybody knows that it’s the food that takes up the lion’s share of planning, prep, and budget — so let’s dig into the details of the perfect taco bar for your large party! You can use this tutorial for a bridal or baby shower, anniversary party, small wedding, or of course your own graduation party.

Planning the Menu: What Is the Best Food to Serve for a Party?

Obviously, before you plan your own menu, you have to choose your meal. Because I decided to have a taco bar, I will detail exactly how I planned that meal in the rest of this post.

If a taco bar isn’t your thing, that’s totally okay. You can reverse engineer a lot of what I did for other meals.

When you choose your meal, think of it this way: What is your primary objective?

• Low budget?
• High curb appeal?
• Food your family loves?
• Something really easy to put together with the skills you already have?
• Or something else?

Hopefully, when you answer those questions, you’ll be able to decide on the perfect meal for your party. I think the best food to serve is a taco bar; but ultimately, the best food is that which fits your skills and your primary objectives.

How to Feed 100 People? 200 People?

Once you’ve chosen your meal, the next challenge when planning food for a large group is to figure out the quantity.

As I mentioned, with a graduation party, it’s extra tricky because you don’t get RSVPs to help you estimate. My greatest fear was running out of food, so I over-shot by a significant amount.

However, I still didn’t waste very much food. So, for me, because of the way I plan, the risk of overestimating wasn’t too high.

As you estimate your own number, whether it’s 100, 200, or 300, keep the following math in mind:

• A “serving” of meat is three ounces when it comes to government directions. That means in one pound of meat, you’ll get just over five “official” servings.
• Caterers say that at least with a taco bar, they expect each person to eat two ounces of meat, which means you get eight servings out of each pound.
• For something like tacos or sandwiches, you could guess that each person might eat one or two, which means the buns or taco shells should equal about double the number of people you expect. Of course, bread, buns, and soft taco shells can all be frozen.
• When it comes to side dishes, release your fear of running out! Simply serve a handful of different dishes, and if you run out of one thing, there’s always something else to fill the void on someone’s plate.
• Always shoot low on lettuce because it doesn’t keep well.
• Shoot low on expensive things like fruit. If you run out, it’s no big deal.
• Keep in mind that not everyone will take everything.
• If you want to discourage huge portions and food waste, buy medium-sized plates instead of extra-wide.

How to Calculate Food for Big Groups and Parties

When estimating sides like rice or beans, imagine how much your family eats in one meal with no leftovers. Multiply that out to reach your party target, and then cut it in half. People simply don’t eat as much at parties as they do at a family dinner, especially if you have a lot of items on your buffet. Folks will take a bit of everything but not much of one thing, which I call the “buffet effect.”

For example, my family might eat one dry cup of rice for a meal, and there are six of us. So, if I were to assume that everyone eats like that, I might use 15 cups of dry rice for about 100 people. That would be an insane amount considering the rice is likely not going to be eaten by everyone and is very much a side dish and not rice-forward like a stir-fry.

I cut that 15-cup estimate in half and then just guessed and fudged the numbers. I made 10 cups of dry white rice for 200 people. That ended up being way, way too much; although for our family, it was easy to use the leftovers, and you can freeze rice.

I made a note that next time I would probably cook 7 to 8 dry cups of rice, although 10 cups do fit in my 8-quart Instant Pot with 17 cups of water!

Similarly, when I estimated meat, I used the caterers’ two-ounce estimation, and then, because I was so fearful of running out of food, I doubled everything.

I did have way too much. 🙂

We prepared 30 pounds of shredded taco chicken and 29 pounds of ground beef, and probably only used about 12 pounds total for 150 people.

I noted that people choose beef over chicken with much higher consumption. So next time, personally, I would make 20 pounds of beef and 15 pounds of chicken. Once again, we greatly enjoyed the frozen leftovers, so it wasn’t a big deal that I over-shot at all.

There are dozens of taco bar calculators online, but I decided I didn’t want help. I’m stubborn like that!

Need More Baby Steps?

Here at Kitchen Stewardship, we’ve always been all about the baby steps. But if you’re just starting your real food and natural living journey, sifting through all that we’ve shared here over the years can be totally overwhelming.

That’s why we took the best 10 rookie “Monday Missions” that used to post once a week and got them all spruced up to send to your inbox – once a week on Mondays, so you can learn to be a kitchen steward one baby step at a time, in a doable sequence.

Yes! One Change a Week please!

Sign up to get weekly challenges and teaching on key topics like meal planning, homemade foods that save the budget (and don’t take too much time), what to cut out of your pantry, and more.

Saving Money While Party Planning: Feeding a Large Group

It really is important to keep the budget in mind even if that’s not your primary priority. When choosing what to serve and quantities, keep the following in mind:

• Sometimes, too much is lovely, but sometimes it’s a pain and can be a waste.
• Ask yourself, “What if this item runs out? Would we actually go get more?” If not, just buy one.
• One example would be a dip. We served multiple dips and had so much left over because I always had a backup. I realized that I should have just purchased one container of each dip and if something ran out, no big deal.
• Similarly, if I ran out of sour cream, I would not go buy more. If I ran out of salsa, I would. Therefore, overshoot on the salsa, undershoot on the sour cream.

You’ll save a lot of money if you don’t throw food away, which means you need to ask a few questions as you choose your meal:

1. Is this something my family will eat as leftovers – perhaps for a whole week?
2. Can most parts of the meal, especially the expensive ones, be frozen for later?

That way, if you overshoot, you still don’t kill your budget.

Quick Quiz: What’s the Cheapest Way to Feed a Crowd?

By far, meat is your most expensive line item, which means the cheapest way to feed a crowd is a meatless meal or one that isn’t meat-centric, and of course, you need to be able to eat the leftovers.

For example:

Burgers vs. Tacos?

Tacos all the way, because people will take small scoops of meat and fill their tacos with ingredients other than meat, but if you give them a burger, they’ll take a whole burger (and a lot of little kids will throw away a good portion).

PLUS, you need someone to grill the burgers hands-on, whereas taco meat can easily be made ahead of time.

Salad Bar vs. Baked Potato Bar?

We already discussed that you need to be able to use/freeze the leftovers, and lettuce is the worst in the category of “keeps well.” If you have too many baked potatoes, you can’t freeze them (well), but you can keep them for a full week or more and use them in many different meals. Per pound, potatoes are much less expensive if you do have some waste.

A baked potato bar is great as well because you can offer a little bit of meat, maybe some taco meat or chili, but most of the toppings are less expensive. (Hint: Put hot baked potatoes in a cooler lined with a beach towel to keep them warm!)

Fruit Cut at Home vs. Pre-Cut Fruit?

Trick question. If you want to plan a budget-friendly party, skip the fruit. It is very expensive!

We chose to provide some fruit, and when it ran out, it ran out and we removed the bowls. The reusable bowls…

For me caring for the environment is another one of my priorities, and that always has to be balanced with the budget. It’s a big question …

Do You Buy Disposable vs. Reusable for Parties?

When I host a party for 10 to 30 people, unlike most in the culture, I’ll use our normal plates and forks. It’s less expensive and saves the environment, and I can just run my dishwasher and it’s no big deal.

For a group of 100 to 200, of course, I’m going to use disposable plates and simply find the least expensive–preferably paper, not Styrofoam or plastic, because paper will decompose faster. Party City was the least expensive in my area.

When it came to items I could reuse from party to party, for me the choice was clear.

It pains my little green heart to see plastic tablecloths used once and then thrown away. I chose to invest in cloth and vinyl tablecloths that we will reuse at least four times because we have four kids.

If you only have two kids, your math would work out differently, of course, but perhaps you can team up with some other parents and share the materials. Keep in mind that you will have to store the items from year to year, which plays into the decision.

I also chose to purchase real chafing dishes instead of using aluminum pans. When I do use aluminum pans, I wash and reuse them because aluminum is 100% recyclable and a non-renewable resource (when we dispose of it all, we don’t get more).

Drinks are a big question when it comes to single-use, disposable items.

Again, my little green heart is pained every time someone uses a plastic water bottle. I know that we already throw away millions per hour in America, and I couldn’t contribute to that. It saved money and the environment to simply use a big five-gallon water jug that we already owned for camping and purchase paper cups. I even set a Sharpie next to them to encourage people to reuse the same cup over and over.

That setup was just as easy, if not easier in my mind, than a few coolers full of water bottles and sugary drinks that I simply chose not to buy.

And, might I add, we spent almost nothing on beverages!

Choosing Conventional vs. Organic for Large Parties

Although my family typically eats some organic foods, particularly meats, I really had to question whether I wanted to spend the extra money to feed this large crowd.

ALDI ended up having their grass-fed ground beef on sale that month for $4 a pound, so I did choose organic ground beef, but went with conventional chicken.

I thought the conventional chicken from GFS looked pretty gross, but it did end up tasting good. Because I’m choosing to only make 10 to 15 pounds of chicken next time, I might splurge for Costco organic chicken breasts or chicken thighs to save a few dollars.

GFS chicken includes up to 15% broth and salt and cost $1.69/lb for the 10-lb bag in 2023.

I went to ALDI right after GFS to discover that for $2.29 a pound, they had chicken breasts with only 1% salt added. Even though that’s a small quality increase, I wish I had gone in that direction.

Ultimately, the conventional versus organic question is very personal, and you’d want to run your budget numbers based on prices in your area for the items you are using. Sometimes organic will double your price while other times it’s just 10 or 20 cents per item.

Planning the Shopping: Food for a Large Group

As I mentioned, I don’t usually hit multiple stores each week for my own family because it’s simply not worth the time. I shop at ALDI weekly and at Costco every four to eight weeks.

For this party, I knew that I had specific needs in large quantities, and price comparing was definitely worth it. I made lists of everything I could possibly need and consulted my price book to choose whether I would shop at ALDI or Costco.

I then visited GFS once to check all the prices, take notes, and buy some of the items that I could freeze, and I also made one more trip there the week of for some non-perishables.

When you’re hosting a party for 200 people, you just need to plan time that week to dedicate completely to party preparation.

If you happen to be going with the taco bar like I did, I’ll share my list of everything we bought, where I purchased it, and how I would change it next time.

Funny Stats: My Food Scarcity Mindset Shows

I planned to cook for about 200, then rounded up because I was so afraid of running out of food.

I’m guessing we had at least 150 people come through, and I know I saw many people eat! But somehow, no one apparently ate actual food, because we had so much leftover.

• Salsa: purchased 48, used 2 1/2
• Canned corn: purchased 24, used 3
• Black beans and pinto beans: cooked two pounds each from dry, used less than half
• Tortillas: purchased 400, probably used less than 60
• Hard shells: purchased 100, used about 20
• Tortilla chips: purchased a dozen bags, only used one, maybe two

Whoops!

Where to Buy Food for a Large Group Taco Bar

Your own location will dictate the stores you use, but DO remember to price compare especially for the items that take up most of the budget, like meat, cheese, and dessert.

Here’s what I’ll buy next time for a taco bar for 200 people:

• 10-12 lbs organic chicken breasts and thighs, Costco
• 20 lbs ground beef – price check!
• 4 batches homemade taco seasoning
• 1 lb each dry pintos and black beans, cooked with salt, cumin, and garlic
• 7 c. white rice
• 2-4 bags shredded Mexican cheese, Costco
• 2 squeeze sour creams from Meijer (more expensive but less gross than the open container into which everything will fall)
• 6 medium and 6 mild salsas, organic, Aldi
• 6 cans corn, Aldi
• 5-6 bags tortilla chips, organic, Costco
• 5-10 bags small soft tortillas, Aldi
• Skip hard shell or buy 2 boxes, Aldi
• 15 avocados for homemade guacamole (we bought 25 and made 15 into guac with about 4 avocados worth leftover – we would have made more “live” had we run out)
• 3 lb spring mix for salad lettuce, GFS
• 1 5-lb bag shredded iceberg for tacos/salads, GFS
• 1-2 ranch dressings, 1 Italian, Aldi
• Veggie tray: 8 lb baby carrots (Costco), 4 pints cherry tomatoes (Aldi), 6-7 cucumbers, 2 cauliflowers, 4-6 sliced peppers. We go through more veggies than that in our family in a week!
• Random dips you enjoy, one tub of each kind
• Dice one huge sweet onion, 2 bags green onion, 4 red onions, Aldi
• 2-3 bags cilantro
• Fruit, optional, grab a few melons and call it good.
• My daughter Leah made 250 cupcakes (flour and butter from Costco) and 150 chocolate chip cookies – better to do 100-150 cupcakes and 100 cookies.
• 2 8×8 pans GF brownies, Aldi
• We bought some lemonade and juice but regret it – more of a pain than it’s worth! Water for the win.

We spent just under $1000 on food and another $50 or so on plates/napkins/cups/cutlery with TONS left over. That doesn’t really account for the dessert because we had so many ingredients at home already…

BUT remember that we had so much food afterward that some of that $1000 is definitely the Kimball family grocery budget for about a week!

We also spent about $300 on items we’ll reuse, including a pop-up tent, vinyl and cloth tablecloths, and chafing dishes and racks.

Preparing Food for a Huge Crowd: Taco Bar Edition

When you’re making your own food to serve hundreds of people, you need organization, a team, and a LIST.

Luckily my kids know how to cook, so we had lots of helping hands that week and especially the day before the party.

Here’s my recommended to-do list schedule that you can steal and adapt:

A week or more in advance:

Cook taco chicken and beef and freeze.

We put our chicken in a slow cooker, and a volunteer cooked ground beef in 4-pound batches in a big pot at the stove, over and over and over.

You could cook beans anytime you like (or use canned) and freeze them as well, but I was running out of room in my freezer.

Three days before:

Move cooked meat from the freezer to the fridge to thaw.

Two days before:

Soak one type of beans (if using two).

The day before:

Cook soaked beans in Instant Pot

Shop for all perishables, especially lettuce

Soak second type of beans

The night before:

Fill 2 slow cookers with meat – one chicken, one beef. Set it on low overnight.

The morning of the party:

Cook beans right away; heat cold beans (I used a small slow cooker on high; you could heat on the stove). If working with a small slow cooker like I was, store WARM beans in a cooler wrapped in a towel under the table so you’re ready to refill. Remember that slow cookers are SLOW. You can’t put cold food in a slow cooker and expect it to be warm right away.

Cook rice; serve from Instant Pot.

Set out all serving dishes in the order you want them; label them with the foods if you’re having helpers fill for you.

Make guacamole fresh; be ready to make more if necessary.

Wash and cut veggies and fruit.

30-60 minutes before the party:

Set out all the food! It’s smart to have people helping, hence the labels on your serving dishes. Don’t forget to set out serving utensils for everything (and think that through beforehand so that you have enough).

It looks deceptively simple to serve 200 people when you look at that list, but it was hard work!

And then again…it wasn’t as hard as I thought. It was a delight to share homemade, wholesome, nourishing food with so many friends and family, and I’ll do it again in a few years.

How to Set Up the Food Table for the Perfect Taco Bar

Keep the cold stuff cold, the hot stuff hot, and warm backups!

• Start with the veggie tray if you want to encourage people to eat more veggies. 🙂
• Near the start place shells, lettuce, tortilla chips – all the bases. (Put salad dressing right by the lettuce.)
• Either meat or beans and rice can come next.
• We put our meats in chafing dishes to stay warm and had extra meat in the slow cookers (on high!) ready to refill.
• Toppins: Put ice in 2 chafing dishes with cheese and lettuce in separate square aluminum foil pans with the squeezey sour cream right in the ice.
• In another chafing dish (foil or metal), use tall-ish dishes or more pans with the 3 kinds of onion and cilantro.
• Be sure to put spoons in the salsa jars or decant into bowls. Label hot, medium, and mild!
• We put fruit at the end, and possibly, people ate less because their plates were full, which worked. Backup fruit was in a cooler with ice packs under the table, stored in reused 5-lb buckets from coconut oil or Real Salt.

I loved hosting and loved having leftovers for weeks (easy dinners!), and I think our guests enjoyed themselves as well. We had so much left over that we even fed the entire cast of a theater production 2 months later!

With the help of my dear friend and neighbor doing things like taking out the trash and refilling food, I was able to utterly enjoy every minute, and I’ll definitely plan a longer party next time if my graduating daughter will permit it!

What did I miss? Share your tips for cooking for large groups below!