Whether you're hosting a dinner for 12 or feeding 200 at a corporate gala, the most stressful question is always the same: how much food do I actually need? Too little and you're scrambling at the end of the night. Too much and you're staring down mountains of expensive leftovers on Monday morning. The Feast Planner — a free event food calculator from Specialty Food Source — ends that guessing game for good.
Party meal planning sounds simple until you're actually doing it. How much beef tenderloin do you need when half your guests will skip the starch? Does a bone-in roast yield the same edible ounces as a boneless one? Does a buffet table require more food than a plated dinner?
The answer to all three is: it depends — and the math compounds fast. A buffet or family-style spread assumes guests return for seconds, so your baseline portions need to be meaningfully higher than a plated dinner where everyone receives a single composed plate. Bone-in proteins yield 30–40% less edible meat per pound, which changes your purchasing math entirely. And the moment you add a second protein option, a cheese course, or a dessert table, every calculation shifts.
Most "how much food for 40 guests" guides on the internet give you a generic chart. That's not enough. What you need is a calculator that understands the difference between a cocktail reception and a seated plated dinner — and adjusts every course accordingly. That's exactly what the Feast Planner does.
The Feast Planner walks you through your entire event menu in a logical, course-by-course sequence. Here's how it works:
Step 1 — Event Basics. Start by entering your guest count, your adult-to-kid ratio, and your event style. The Feast Planner supports seven formats: Cocktail Reception, Pre-Dinner Reception, Plated Dinner, Buffet, Family Style, Brunch, and BBQ/Casual. Each style sets a distinct baseline portion — a buffet automatically factors in second servings while a plated dinner does not.
Step 2 — Set Your Generosity Level. Choose from Tight, Balanced, Abundant, or Memorable Feast. This single dial adjusts every quantity across every course, letting you calibrate for a lean working lunch or an opulent holiday party with equal precision.
Step 3 — Build Your Courses. Toggle on each course you're serving — Appetizers, Soup, Salad, Entrée, Dessert, Beverages. For appetizers, you set the number of varieties and pieces per person, and assign a style to each tray (charcuterie, artisan cheeses, smoked salmon canapés, shrimp cocktail, and 20+ more). For the entrée, you configure proteins, starches, vegetable sides, sauces, and bread service individually.
Step 4 — Read Your Shopping List. As you build the menu, the shopping list panel updates in real time. It tells you exactly how many pounds of beef tenderloin to order, how many pieces of each appetizer to prep, how many servings of each dessert to plate, and more — all in the units you actually use when shopping or placing orders.
The result is professional catering math, made accessible to anyone planning an event — no spreadsheet required.
The Feast Planner doesn't just calculate quantities — it connects them directly to the Specialty Food Source marketplace. Every section of your shopping list includes a direct link to the relevant product collection, so you can move seamlessly from "I need 9 lb of beef tenderloin" to actually sourcing it.
Your event's specialty food shopping list draws from collections across the site:
Need to shop everything at once? The SHOP THESE ON SFS → button on the shopping list takes you directly to browse the full catalog of over 100 artisan vendors, with nationwide shipping and no account or minimum order required.
And when you're ready to head to the kitchen — or hand the list to a colleague — just hit PRINT LIST. The Feast Planner generates a clean, formatted shopping list ready for a catering prep sheet, a grocery run, or a purchasing order.
Home Hosts planning dinner parties, holiday feasts, or milestone celebrations who want to stop over-buying and under-buying. The Feast Planner answers "how much food for 40 guests" or 14 or 80, with the same confidence.
Caterers and Event Professionals who need professional catering math that accounts for service style, guest demographics, and multi-course menus. The print feature makes it easy to turn a calculator session into a working kitchen document.
Culinary Schools and Teaching Kitchens where students need to learn proper yield calculations, portion theory, and event-scale food planning. The Feast Planner makes abstract math tangible and interactive.
Corporate and Institutional Planners responsible for feeding teams, conference attendees, or gala guests — where under-catering has real professional consequences and the budget needs to be defensible.
No matter where you fall, the Feast Planner handles the math so you can focus on what you're actually cooking.
Specialty Food Source was built for people who take food seriously. Our catalog connects home cooks, professional chefs, culinary educators, and event teams to premium ingredients — single-origin chocolates, artisan proteins, specialty cocoa butters, professional-grade vanilla — sourced from over 100 vendors and shipped nationwide.
But sourcing the right ingredients is only half the challenge. Knowing how much to order — without years of catering experience or a food-science degree — is the other half. We built the Feast Planner because we kept hearing the same question from customers: "I have an event coming up. How much do I need?"
The Feast Planner is our answer. It's free, it requires no login, and it's designed to work whether you're planning your first dinner party or your five-hundredth. Have questions or feedback? Reach out to our team — we'd love to hear how you're using it.
Stop guessing and start planning with confidence. The Feast Planner is free to use, works for any guest count, and connects directly to the specialty ingredients your menu deserves.
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