Academic Ventures - Personal, Cost-Effective Conference Planning

F&B: By Time

If attempting to estimate how many bites per person or the number of crudités trays you will need to keep your guests happy causes you a great deal of stress consider a “per-hour” option for your reception.

In the “per-hour” scenario the caterer will keep you and your guests in hors d’oeuvres for a predetermined period (typically two hours) for a fixed rate per person.

Although the rate is fixed, you will need to estimate for budget purposes how many people will attend.

And while there is no need to count canapés or skewers you should be prepared to count number of attendees as your caterer certainly will be counting heads (to see if more, not less, showed up.) And once the event is over you bill will be based on their actual number.

You can expect higher pricing per unit as the caterer must account for the worst-case scenario in planning for food (i.e. the party goer who consumes 20 bites instead of the average 4-8 bites), many event organizers find the ease of not having to concentrate on how many trays of coconut shrimp has been consumed is more than a fair trade-off.

F&B: Pre-packaged Value

Items charged “on consumption” are typically pre-packaged goods, which when unused could be sold again. They are pre-packaged so they arrive to your event already made and packaged by a third-party supplier – things like bags of pretzels, cans of soda, wrapped cereal bars and so forth.

With pre-packaged products, the caterer is able to display these items for attendees to select. After your event the unopened, untampered packages can be restocked and sold at another event.

Pre-packaged does not necessarily mean non-perishable. Yogurts and individual servings of milk or juice are examples of perishable items that can be made available “on consumption.”

One benefits of ordering “on consumption” is that you only pay for what is used. If only five out of 100 guests pick up a bag of chips then you only pay for the five bags.

On the negative side per-item pricing tends to be more expensive because the caterer builds in the handling and restocking costs of pre-packaged items. It is also difficult to budget for items on consumption because you can only guess at how many items will be consumed. Here some history is helpful and your caterer can be of assistance as to how many items typically are selected.

One further note regarding purchasing “on consumption,” be sure you are willing to actually count the consumption. Not only do you need to count how many items were displayed and how many items remained after the event but you need to know if the supply was replenished during the event.

F&B: Price Per Quantity

Per quantity pricing indicates that the item is served in a pre-determined quantity and you need to order it in multiples of that quantity.

Coffee is a good example of this – it is provided by the urn thus if five people are looking for coffee during the morning break and you order more coffee from the venue, you can expect to be charged for an additional urn and not just five cups of coffee.

It is important to differentiate your caterer from a restaurateur. The latter has several customers and can prepare a larger amount of food to be divided and served to different customers. With your caterer they are preparing food just for you so you must agree to buy the entire pie and not just a slice since they are not able to sell other slices of pie to other customers that day.

Getting the Most Out of Conferences

Getting the Most Out of Conferences.

F&B: Consumption & hours

Perhaps in ordering food we are most familiar with is price per quantity in which we pay a fee for a certain quantity of appetizers. But caterers have other pricing options for your event including: “on consumption” where you are charged for just what is consumed and “per hour” where you pay a set fee for enough of an item for a defined time.

Which is best of course depends on the type of event you are hosting, your budget and your desire for a fixed expense in your budget.

F&B: Per Quantity and Bites per Ounce

Determining how many ounces of hors d’oeuvres to order is not much different than figuring out how many bites to order. Let’s say you want to serve potato salad, which is sold by the ounce. Your attendees really like potato salad so you plan for 5 ounces per person. You easily can figure how many people a 50-ounce bowl of potato salad will serve.

So you order 10 bowls for 100 guests.

F&B: Per Quantity + Bites per Tray

Because we built the F&B budget based on number of bites and identified the average cost per bite, we can continue to use that math to place our order.

Let’s say you are hosting a cocktail reception for 100 people and want to provide an average of six bites per guest. Hors d’oeuvres are available in trays of 50. If you have 100 guests then you will want to order at least 600 bites of food or 12 trays of hors d’oeuvres. Simple, right?

What if cold hors d’oeuvres are available in trays of 50 but hot hors d’oeuvres are available in trays of 25? Look to the budget for your answers. It shows an average cost of hot hors d’oeuvres at $1.20 per bite and $1 per cold.

We opt for four hot bites per person (400 total) and two cold bites per person (200 total). We order four trays of cold hors d’oeuvres (50 per tray) and 16 trays of hot hors d’oeuvres (25 per tray).

F&B: PPQ…Pricing Per Quantity

We now look at the venue’s catering menu to translate the offerings to a per-bite number so we can be consistent with our F&B event budget format. This continues the F&B “per” pricing discussion.

Per-quantity pricing indicates the item is served in a designated quantity. You need to order multiples based on your expected attendance. Coffee is a good example of this – it usually costs less to buy by the urn. If your attendees want more coffee than the urn provides, you’ll need to order and buy more coffee by the urn from the venue (you can’t just ask for five cups of coffee).

This is how most reception pricing is done. In looking at hot or cold hors d’oeuvres you may see it priced per tray, per dozen or per 50 or even per ounce.

F&B The Triple Ps

Per-person pricing best fits our budget model. No translation is needed to fit this into our budget format. Lunches, breaks, breakfasts, dinners and reception packages are often priced per person. These tend to be all-inclusive but usually do not mean all-you-can-eat.

In situations where the food is served–luncheons or dinners, the per-person pricing is clearly based on a single serving. It is not acceptable for a guest to ask their server for seconds without paying an additional cost just as you don’t get a discount if someone wants only half their dinner. The cost is the same for each person.

In a buffet or self-serve situation, the venue bases the cost on their experience—they average how much is consumed by a single attendee and charge accordingly. Some guests are going to take more than one serving but just as likely other guests will take less. Again, the cost is the same for each person but people who desire more to eat can and those who desire less (or nothing) to eat can do so too.

All-inclusive means it covers all aspects of the F&B event. For a lunch or dinner it likely includes salad, bread, entrée, starch, dessert and beverages. Again, it is one serving per person so if guests want more than what is serve, an additional price would be paid. All-inclusive should not be confused with all-you-can-eat alternatives which are discussed later.

All-inclusive per-person arrangements work well but be sure they include the items you desire. For example, provided beverages typically are coffee, tea and water pitchers. If you want to give the option of soda, beer or wine, the all-inclusive package will need to be modified.

F&B: Comparing a dozen apples to apples by the dozen

Our mission continues towards having meaningful F&B costs in an early-stage budget (see below for the first parts in the series),

Even though we are a long way from selecting a menu we have used a little math to get an average price for our hors d’oeuvres. We can use this figure to generate both meaningful cost estimates early on and a framework to select specific menu items later.

We’ve reviewed a number of factors to determine a good estimate for expected attendance at each of our F&B events. And we attempted to answer the question of “how many bites.”

Now is a good time to take another look at the venue’s catering menu to see how items are offered and what we need to do to translate those offerings into a per-bite number consistent with our F&B event budget format. To do this we must understand how F&B items are priced.

F&B items are typically priced “per person” or “per quantity.” Pricing based “on consumption” is common as well. You may even come across “per hour” pricing.