For catering, plan on roughly one and a half main dish portions per person when there is one main, and a little over one portion each when there are several. Add six to eight appetizer pieces per person if appetizers run before the meal, and more if they are the meal. The usual mistake is too many dishes rather than too little food.
Key takeaways
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The working answer for a full meal is about one and a half portions of main per person. That sounds like over ordering and it is not, because a portion is a serving size rather than an appetite, and a meaningful share of any room will take a second helping.
If you are putting out several mains, the total still lands around one and a half portions per head. It just gets split across the dishes rather than concentrated in one, which is why offering more options does not mean ordering more food.
Because the variables move more than the people do. The same forty guests eat very differently at a lunchtime meeting than at an evening party, and differently again if the event runs for an hour versus four.
The biggest factors are the time of day, how long the event lasts, whether people are seated or standing, how many dishes are available, and whether anything else is being served alongside. Headcount is only the starting point.
A portion is what a caterer treats as one serving, and it is usually smaller than what someone would serve themselves at home. That gap is exactly why the one and a half rule exists.
Trays are the practical unit. Knowing a tray serves ten to twelve people tells you more than a weight does, because it is already expressed in the terms you are planning in. On the Curry Up Now catering page, protein trays are listed as serving ten to twelve, rice and naan trays serve ten to twenty, and a dessert tray serves ten.
Count in pieces rather than portions. Six to eight pieces per person is the standard figure when appetizers run before a meal, and ten to twelve when the appetizers are the meal.
A few adjustments on top of that:
Our guide to Indian appetizers covers which ones hold up on a table and which need eating quickly, and Indian snack food covers the wider category.
Build the plate in parts and size each one. For a standard catered meal that means a main, a base such as rice or bread, something on the side, and a condiment.
The reliable structure is one and a half main portions per head, one portion of base per head with a little spare, and sides sized to fill the plate rather than to be eaten in full. Sides are where generous ordering does the least work, because people take a spoonful regardless of how much is there.
Two for a small group, three for a medium one, four at most for a large one. Beyond that you are adding choice without adding satisfaction, and you are guaranteeing leftovers of whichever dish turns out to be least popular.
The better use of budget is depth rather than breadth. Three dishes in generous quantity feel abundant. Six in thin quantity feel picked over by the time half the room has been through, even though the total volume is identical.
Order more vegetarian food than your vegetarian headcount suggests. If a quarter of the room is vegetarian, a quarter of the food being vegetarian will not be enough, because non vegetarians eat vegetarian dishes freely while the reverse is not true.
A practical split is to make around forty percent of the main volume vegetarian when a quarter of the room is vegetarian, and to make the vegetarian dish a genuinely substantial one rather than a side. A chickpea or lentil dish does this far better than a vegetable side, as our guides to vegan and vegetarian Indian food and paneer both cover.
Running out of the vegetarian option is the failure people remember, because the guests affected have nothing else to eat. Running out of a meat dish is an inconvenience, since those guests can eat everything else on the table.
That asymmetry is the whole argument for over ordering on the vegetarian side. It costs a little more and it removes the only scenario where a guest leaves hungry.
About one portion each, plus a small buffer. Rice and bread are the elastic part of a spread: they absorb a shortfall elsewhere, and they are what people reach for when a main runs low.
Two practical notes. Bread is eaten faster than anyone plans for, especially when it is warm, so err upward. Rice holds better than bread does across a long event, so for anything running more than an hour or two, weight the order toward rice.
There is also a presentation argument for ordering generously here. A spread with full rice and bread trays reads as abundant even when the mains are running low, which buys the kitchen time on a refill and stops the table looking depleted halfway through service.
Yes, more than most people account for. A one hour lunch and a four hour party with the same guest list need noticeably different quantities, because grazing accumulates.
For anything over about two hours, plan on people eating in two waves rather than one, and either order for that or stagger what goes out. Putting everything on the table at the start of a long event is the most common way to run out at the end.
The second wave is also different in character. People eat less of the mains and more of the snacks and bread, so a long event benefits from a deeper order of the things that hold rather than more of everything.
It does. A midday corporate lunch is usually a single controlled serving, and people eat once and get back to work. An evening event runs longer and people return to the table repeatedly.
Weekday office lunches are the most predictable of all, which is why recurring programs are easy to size accurately after the first couple of orders. Our guides to office catering and Indian corporate catering cover that pattern.
People eat less when they are standing, because managing a plate and a drink with two hands is awkward. Plan around ten to twenty percent less food, and weight it toward anything that can be eaten in one or two bites.
Format matters more than quantity here. Something that needs cutting will go uneaten at a standing event no matter how much of it you ordered.
Around ten percent over your final headcount is the usual safety margin, and it covers the two things that reliably happen: a few more people than confirmed, and a few people eating considerably more than average.
Where that margin goes matters as much as the size of it:
Groups that have been working or traveling, events that run over a mealtime without a scheduled meal, and any crowd where the food is a highlight rather than a formality. A sports or celebration crowd eats more than a board meeting with the same headcount.
The reverse is true too. A short mid afternoon event between meals eats very little, and over ordering there produces waste rather than reassurance.
If you genuinely cannot read the room, size to the mains generously and keep the side count low. That combination fails gracefully in both directions, because extra main gets eaten and extra sides do not.
Roughly half an adult portion for younger children and close to a full one for teenagers, who often eat more than adults do. For a family event such as a graduation or a birthday, count teenagers as adults and you will not be far off.
Our guide to graduation catering covers mixed age events, where the spread of appetites is widest.
Serve in rounds rather than putting everything out at once. Hold back a portion of each dish and refill, which keeps the table looking full and stops the most popular item disappearing in the first fifteen minutes.
Two other things help. Label the dishes clearly, because unlabeled food gets skipped by anyone with a dietary requirement and over taken by everyone else. And put the most popular dish in the middle rather than at the start of the line, so people have already filled part of the plate before they reach it. Occasion specific advice is in our guides to holiday party catering and wedding catering.
By headcount and format rather than by a flat per person rule, with the tray and package sizes published so you can check the math yourself.
Here is what the catering page states:
Those tray figures are the useful part when you are checking a quote, because they let you confirm the quantity independently of the headcount on the order.
Lead time is around twenty hours for standard orders, and five to seven business days for a hundred or more guests or a food truck booking. Halal, vegan, vegetarian, gluten free and keto options are built into every catering menu, with the page noting that cross contamination cannot be fully guaranteed. The allergen guide covers dairy, wheat, eggs, nuts, sesame and soy in more detail.
If you are unsure, send the headcount and the event type and let the team size it. You can do that from the contact page or the catering form. The dishes themselves are on the menu, with the street food side covered in vegetarian Indian street food and samosas.
About one and a half main portions per head, one portion of rice or bread, and sides sized to fill the plate rather than to be finished. Offering more dishes does not change the total, it just splits it.
Six to eight pieces each if a meal follows, ten to twelve if the appetizers are the meal. Shorten that to four to six for a brief reception before a seated dinner.
Over order, slightly. A small amount left in a tray is the correct outcome. Running out is the thing guests remember, and it is the one mistake you cannot fix on the day.
More than your vegetarian headcount implies, because non vegetarians eat vegetarian dishes and not the other way round. Make the vegetarian option substantial rather than a side dish.
Yes. Anything over about two hours means people eat in waves rather than once. Either order for that or stagger what goes out, and hold back a refill of each dish.
Size to your best estimate plus about ten percent, and ask the caterer how late the number can change. Most will accept an adjustment up to a point before the lead time closes.
Quantity planning is simpler than it looks once you stop thinking in plates. One and a half main portions per person, one base portion with a buffer, six to eight appetizer pieces, and ten percent on top. That covers most events.
The judgement calls are where the margin goes and how many dishes you offer. Put the extra on the mains and the vegetarian option, keep the dish count low, and serve in rounds rather than all at once.
Find your nearest Curry Up Now to talk through an order, or read the story behind the brand.
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