BBQ & cocktails - catering for 30

Chuchi

Hi there, I'm new around here but loads of great tips! Thanks everyone!

I'm wondering if I can seek some ideas/tips for a party I'm hosting in the summer. BBQ and cocktails. It will be all girls, about 25-30 of us with a handful of non drinkers (maybe 4?)

I've never organised anything for so many people and am finding it hard to set a budget and to decide if I'm going to order too much/too little.

Lunch is picnic style with a glass of something bubbly. I'll be serving pimms and lemonade in the afternoon. I'm quite comfortable with these but after that will come the BBQ and cocktails. Starting 6pm and finishing late (with an organised activity for a couple of hours where people won't be able to drink as much).

BBQ: planning to get meat from the local butcher who is cheaper than the super market. Am I going to over/under cater with 1 burger and 2 sausages per person? I was thinking of also doing some chicken or lamb kebabs - do I do this in addition to those quantities? side dishes I'm thinking tomato salad, potato salad, coleslaw, bowl of leaves... Maybe some Cous cous - hopefully this is enough variety.

Cocktails: planning a DIY cocktail bar and thinking 2L vodka, 1L dark rum and 75cl tequila. This is just an estimate - I've tried using drinks calculators online but they are really for if you're serving wine and beer too. There won't be any beer, there may be some wine but the majority will be drinking cocktails. I'm told 1 litre of spirits will make 22 drinks - so this equates to about 3 (maybe4) cocktails each average. Is this enough or should I stretch to another bottle of something?! Perhaps I don't have enough variety? But I'm anticipating people will go from making proper cocktails to drinking rum and coke etc. I just can't decide - has anyone done anything similar?

I'd really appreciate any advice you may be able to give me! I really want to get this right but want to try keep the costs down too! I appreciate I have to spend a certain amount but don't want to overspend / pay more than I have to and want to get a budget sorted pretty soon

So many thanks for any help you can provide!

FairyPrincessk

I can't speak on the question of food quantities---although I suspect you've over-estimated. It really depends on how long the food will be available/how hungry people will be (i.e. will there be nuts or nibbles with the pimms beforehand? will the BBQ be served over more than an hour? others can probably advise).

On the DIY cocktails, keep in mind that if people are mixing themselves they're generally very generous with how much of the spirits go in. Sometimes this is intentional but often it is just that it is very had to gauge and often people can't be bothered to measure. If you want to keep costs down, pitchers of pre-mixed cocktails are a good way to do this. You just pick several, mix them up beforehand and keep them chilling. Trays of fancy garnish mean people can decorate their own.

While the mixing is fun, it also causes bottle necks, particularly if you have that many guests. If they all need to use a shaker/strainer etc then you'll need a number of these, particularly as they'll tend to need re-fills in clumps. Also note that although mixing can be fun, after the first one or two the novelty wears off and people just want a refill.:rotfl:

So, that in mind it really depends on how much your friends drink.

AnnieO1234

Hi OP, this probably won't help you as it's greater quantities but when I've catered for the golf course, especially in DH's captains year, we did breakfast lunch and evening buffet. Breakfast and lunch was for 80 and evening buffet was 150.

Breakfast and lunch were BBQ out on the course. Did bacon sandwiches to begin with with 6 catering packs of bacon and used rest up for burgers later. Had 120 burgers and all had gone by end. These were fresh scotch beef quarter or third pounders (can't remember) but around £5 for 8 at makro and absolutely gorgeous.

On top of this I had onions on the side burner (frozen were so much easier), a couple boxes veggie burgers just in case, proper burger buns, plastic cheese then a salad bar with just basic lettuce, tomatoe, cucumber, sauces (again catering ones from makro were brilliant and cheap for quantity). I had a fridge plugged in with cold drinks, usual coca cola etc and beers, and then a one cup kettle for coffee, tea, bovril, chocolate etc. for this I bought single serve coffees, teas sugar and milk and those vendor style cups of hot choc soup bovril etc plus cups for rest.

For the buffet, the venue provided 50 portions of sandwiches and chips, we then added a cartload literally of cheese, meats, salad, breadsticks, brea dips, fruit, crisps all primarily from aldi (cheese and meat cannot be beaten).

By the end of the day there was little left.

My point is the food will be eaten! I would avoid chicken unles you cook it in oven first maybe in a marinade and finish on BBQ. For 30 people I would probably get at least 45 burgers which allows for one or two to get caught. Simple salads on side and fresh fruits for dessert and you should be set. I'd also maybe especially as it sounds like quite a posh is the wrong word, classy? event, I would actually do some charred salmon portions or even a whole salmon on the BBQ. If you can't stretch to that prawn skewers, and some veggie ones besides.

Xxx

LE3

It's important to know if you are keeping the BBQ going all night or just for an hour or two?
If the BBQ is the only food between 6pm & late and going all night then you have definitely undercatered for meat. If it's only on for an hour or two then you may be ok. Think what you'd eat yourself ...
If I'd had a picnic lunch, unless it was one of the "royal spreads", I think I'd want a couple of sausages around 6 ish, something around 7/7:30 and if the BBQ is still going I'd be looking for more food by 8:30 and maybe again by 9:30 depending on alcohol consumed & what else I was doing. The girls I know are fairly big eaters, the ones you know may be the sort who eat like sparrows - we can't tell!
For a group of ~25, with the grill going for 2-3 hours, I'd have at least 50 sausages, 30 burgers & a batch of "something else" like salmon, chicken breast, those pre-prepared skewer things that you can buy in the supermarkets during BBQ season AND I'd have a few bits on standby just in case! I also would be buying decent quality sausages/burgers - the better the quality the less people will want! What are you doing for vegetarians? Will people grill their own meat (if so they are more liklely to wander off to grab a drink/get chatting/burn it) than if somebody is "overseeing" the BBQ ...

Whether or not the BBQ was going for a couple of hours or all night, I'd also be providing desserts (trifle, gateau etc) with the salads

As for the cocktails, you either need to premix, have a "bar tender" or up your quantities - you'd probably only get 15 self-poured servings from a bottle (try it yourself! grab a glass & add water as if it were the rum/vodka in your drink & then measure it - you may be shocked how generously you pour!)

flea72

Foodwise it depends on how much your friends eat. My close friends would want at least a burger, sausage and piece of chicken, plus the option for 2nds. However, my girly friends tend to limit their public eating and wouldnt touch a burger/sausage and would nibble at a bit of non-fatty chicken, with a lettuce leaf. I boil chicken til its cooked, then put it on the bbq. This way you know its cooked thru, but it gets all its flavour/colour from the bbq.

Unless you have a bartender making drinks, the cocktail idea will fall flat very quickly. Most people dont know the recipes, so will get quantities wrong, and waste alot of foul tasting concoctions. Prob best to just have jugs of different cocktails ready to go, which are quick/simple to make that you can quickly replenish, as they run low. Umbrellas, cherrys and slices can be left to the drinker to add

Your alcohol quantities look fairly low to me. Also cocktails arent just the base alcohols. The extras that give them the colours and bite are where the price adds up, ie curaco, grenadine, etc. i would allow 2 drinks per person per hour, so if your cocktail time is 6pm til midnight, thats 12 drinks per person already. I know most will at some point intersperse with a soft drink, but some will also drink more than 2 cocktails per hr. At least if you are pre-mixing you can control the strength and start to water down a bit if you start to run low.

Savannah02K

We did a girly cocktail party last year and must admit, we just hit the local Home Bargains but also kept an eye out in the major supermarkets, and bought the pre mixed cocktail drinks. Aldi also do them. We just bought and borrowed some plastic and glass pitchers, used children's fruit and sweet stickers to decorate them and then decanted the various bottles into those. The bottles were all stashed in the fridge to keep cold and we just went in every so often to top up the pitchers. We had about six different varieties and as a party game, ran a competition on what you thought the cocktail contained and how you rated it. No one knew we hadn't made them ourselves and to be honest, by about the third glass I don't think anyone cared. We decorated the glasses with cocktail umbrellas, cherries etc.


Re the food, we pre cooked chicken, lemon sole goujons, and then put those on the bbq (together with different flatbreads and wraps), and served them with (again pre cooked) roasted veggies (see Mary Berry's programme on BBC2 last night) and a variety of salads and dressings.


Keep it simple is my advice. If you're not stressed by it all, the guests will enjoy it.

hoglet121

I know people have already mentioned it but the best way to keep your costs down is to pre-mix pitchers of cocktails. I think your alcohol quantities look low for a DIY cocktail bar, but 3-4 pitchers of different, well diluted, cocktails will help you not blow the budget and will keep guests happy. No one wants to hang around waiting for the cocktail shaker... A pitcher of rum and coke would probably work well too, and keep your costs down. Consider a fancy looking pitcher of non-alcohol cocktail too, orange juice, lemonade and grenadine for example?

Also the more people drink the more 'random' the combinations will become and drinks will be wasted. We held a party to use up our cocktail cabinet before we emigrated, and the concoctions people made were truly disgusting. Fortunately the aim was to get rid of the stuff we couldn't take with us so I wasn't bothered, but if it was under normal circumstances I would have been pretty annoyed.

Food wise, unless people are paying to come, don't feel like you have to over cater at all. A burger and a couple of sausages each, with a few vegetarian substitutes, with a couple of salads will be absolutely fine. You don't need to cater for people's every whim or desire, it's you that's footing the bill. If you really would like to do something different, a whole baked fish on the BBQ will work out a lot easier and cheaper than pieces of chicken and individual portions of fish, prawns etc, and if you decide to do something like that reduce the number of sausages you're planning on. I know you'll want everyone to have a great time, but remember to look after yourself and not give yourself too much work as well as looking after your budget.

In my opinion the BBQs that have worked the best have been the simplest, and they have also worked out the most cost effective. The absolute best was a build your own burger bar - we only offered burgers (and bean burgers) and then had a table with lots of toppings, cheese, onions, bacon etc. It went down really well.

Hope whatever you decide to do works out well for you.

Chuchi

Aww so many great ideas. Thank you so much for your responses. There is a lot to digest here. To answer a couple of questions - for lunch ive planned a picnic (sandwiches and scones) and I hadn't anticipated serving anything during the afternoon food wise as planning to have the bbq fairly early (6pm) The BBQ will be a couple of hours - before having a dance activity for a couple of hours. I hadn't considered people might get peckish later on. We are definitely not a crowd of salad peckers...
Thinking maybe fresh strawberries, cream and chocolate brownies for pudding after the BBQ (or after the dance activity if they prefer)
I will be buying all the produce but someone will be cooking for me.
I'm really liking the idea of pitchers of cocktails - will be a lot less hassle.
Thanks for all the help - I will be rereading the responses to make sure I've picked up all the tips! Thanks!

Savannah02K

Just one final shout from me, don't do strawberries and cream. Lot of work in hulling strawberries when you're doing loads of other stuff for the party, go for raspberries and cream instead or maybe do your warm brownies with clotted cream and blueberries and as a second choice do a big cake that people can just cut themselves a slice. Look at that fab Mary Berry lemon cake using two lemons that are boiled up and incorporated into the mix. Or if you want really easy, do a Betty Crocker carrot cake and buy their frosting mix. Not all that money saving but time is money too .......

flea72

Agree strawberries take too much prep and are expensive. Eton mess is simpler. A rew rasperies, crushed meringues and whipped cream

krlyr

Is it a party for friends, or more official? You could always do a BYOB (bring your own booze) if casual enough an event.