Academic Ventures - Personal, Cost-Effective Conference Planning

Estimating (F&B) Attendance

Our goal is to find a way to have meaningful F&B costs on an early-stage budget even though we are a long way from selecting a menu.

We have used a little math to get our hot and cold hors d’oeuvres pricing into an average price that we will use to generate both meaningful cost estimates early on and the ability to select menu items at a later date.

Next we need to figure out how many attendees will be eating at this F&B event.

Figuring out the number of attendees is definitely more “art” than “science.” While I have yet to find a good rule of thumb to figure out the percentage of conference attendees to expect at an F&B event, there are a few factors worth looking at in estimated the quantity of food to order.

So what factors should we consider before making adjustments, if any, between the estimated number of attendees and F&B estimates? 

Historical - if the conference has been held before it would be helpful to know how much food was consumed or how many registrants attended the F&B event.

Nearby restaurants – if the conference is in a location with many alternative dining choices nearby, you are likely to notice a bigger gap between number of people registered for the conference and the number of attendees at a cocktail reception. Sure the reception is included in the registration fee, but people like to explore…especially if they have been in the same venue for hours (or days). You can expect a larger percentage of registered attendees if other nearby dining options are limited.

Off-site venue – Conference-sponsored F&B events held off-site will experience a dip in attendance as some attendees view traveling to/from as a hassle and others, once away from the host venue, find more enticing options.

Schedule flow – having the reception tied to something happening before or after will affect the number of attendees. The more contiguous the F&B event is to a conference event (both schedule-wise and location-wise) the higher the level of participation. The more space (both schedule-wise and location-wise) the lower the participation level.

Overall schedule – the day the F&B event is occurring will also influence attendance with, all things being equal, attendance drops slightly each day as registrants have other obligations, travel arrangements and limited interest.

Type of event – some conferences are more conducive to entertaining clients or colleagues gathering in smaller groups. Knowing the nuances of your event will help in anticipating the level of attendance at each of your F&B events.

Programming – what is planned for your F&B event may influence attendance. Programming may include a keynote address, special presentation, awards, entertainment or other attractions that will cause greater (or lesser) interest in the F&B event.

Playing the Average

Our goal is to find a way to have meaningful F&B costs in an early-stage budget even though we are a long way from selecting a menu.

While many items in our F&B events are already priced per person, reception food frequently is charged by the quantity, creating some work to be done but with a little math and a little finesse we can translate these menus items into our a per-person format.

To develop a good estimated cost we can get the price-per-large-quantity hot and cold hors d’oeuvres into an average per-bite price that we will use to generate both meaningful cost estimates early on and the ability to select menu items at a later date.

To do this I like to play the average.

Let’s say we are putting together an event for an academic conference that includes a reception during which attendees can browse through poster presentations. We are not at the point of picking a menu but we need to factor in the cost of this F&B event to set our registration fee. So what numbers should we use?

Simply review the venue’s catering menu and average the costs of hot hors d’oeuvres and cold hors d’oeuvres. I can then adjust the number of estimated attendees and the number of bites being offered.

Let’s explore… look at the following menu:

Hot hors d’oeuvres …

Petite Quiche    $10.05 per dozen
Chicken Satays     $16.30 per dozen
Spanakopita $45.80 per hundred
Toasted Ravioli $ 9.20 per dozen

Cold hors d’oeuvres…

Smoked Salmon    $10.20 per dozen
Antipasto $ 2.35 per person
Peel and Eat Shrimp $12.75 per dozen

First order of business is to get everything into the same quantities so I would use $5.52 per dozen for the Spanakopita ($45.80 divided by 100 then multiplied by 12). And I would leave the Antipasto out of the equation for now.

Next I would do the simple math of adding the four hot hors d’oeuvres prices together and dividing that sum by the number of choices (four) to get an average price of a hot hors d’oeuvre of $10.27 per dozen (the sum of 10.05 + 16.30 + 5.52 + 9.20 divided by four). And doing the same exercise yields and average cold hors d’oeuvres price of $11.48 (the sum of 10.20 + 12.75 divided by two).

Once I know the average price of these menu items I can plug them into my working budget. However, as we’ll see, there is a little more math to do.

Dealing with F&B Variables

We continue to look at the Food &Beverage portion of our budgeting process. Having gone through all the reasons why F&B is a tricky budget item it seems only fair to discuss ways to address these challenges in putting a budget together.

A budget is a living document. It is frequently updated as new data comes in and decisions are made. Eventually the budget should list each F&B item but early on – when so many important decisions are being made –people are looking to the budget for answers and it contains the fewest details.

So we need to find a way to get some meaningful data on the budget that gives us the flexibility to decide on a menu later, easily adjust for ever-changing attendance estimates, and is compatible with the venue’s menu.

This is easy enough for lunches, dinners, or breaks – really anything that is priced at a per-person rate.

However, when charges are by quantity as they often are for receptions there is some work to be done. But with a little math and a little finesse we can translate these menus items into our per-person format.

Once we have these estimates we will be able to proceed with a budget that is useful (which means it contains numbers that can be used to make good decisions) and updateable

The budget will be useful because it contains numbers that can be used to make good decisions. It will be updatable because we can edit as more accurate numbers are available without reformatting the document. This is important as it not only makes the work simpler but easier for organizing committee members to follow the changes from one budget version to the next. When budget numbers change, a good committee member/client will want to know what changed. The easier that person can see the differences between the versions, the more confidence that person will have in that document.

During the next few entries we will explore a process by which we build a per-person/per-bite line item into our budget by coming up with a useful price estimate, determine the amount of food to order per person and estimate the number of attendees.

So we will be looking at developing a good estimated cost, a good estimated attendance and a good per-person/per-bite estimate to put in our budget.