How to Buy Food for Your Party (But Not Too Much)

But most of all, how do I not over-plan so that I can avoid food waste? 

To figure it out, I sat down with private chefs and party organizers for their insights on the logistics of hosting dinner parties. Here’s what I learned about how to be an eco-friendly host.

Andrew Iacono, a private chef who runs a dinner pop-up called AM in the PM with his partner Ann Marie Bashore, suggests budgeting two to three items for each guest.

But remember to not let the hors d’oeuvres steal the show. Sometimes, it may also help guests to shift their attention from cocktail hour chatter to the main course of the night. “Running out of hors d’oeuvres is a great way to actually get people to sit down at the table for the rest of the meal,” Iacono said.  

When planning a dinner party, you may want to plate each course for your guests. But not everyone eats the same amount or likes all the same foods. Letting guests serve themselves is a no-fail way to reduce food waste by ensuring their portions are perfectly tailored to their tastes. That way, you can easily save the leftovers.

Pao Thampitak, the chef behind Gaaeng Boston, a Thai-focused pop-up, is a strong proponent of family style meals; at his dinner parties, his guests (many of them strangers at the beginning of the meal!) gather around the table and pass around steaming hot plates of home-cooked Thai dishes.

To make sure he doesn’t over-buy, he estimates for a ballpark figure of 350 to 400 grams of total food per guest to make sure that no one leaves hungry. 

Most people turn to big box stores to buy all their supplies, but it’s worth going to more than one store to select your items. In fact, Iacono finds that some specialty butcher or food shops even give you a better deal on certain items. For instance, some butcher shops may give you a discount if you buy a whole brisket or whole cut of meat that would otherwise require its staff additional work to pare down into smaller portions.

To help stretch his budget, he also buys items in a larger format (and a nice bonus from using whole animals is that you can make use of the spare parts to make stock and sauces.).

Similarly, Thampitak also takes a whole-animal approach whenever possible for his pop-up events. He recounted that at one time, killing an animal only happened on special occasions such as weddings and religious holidays. “Whenever they kill any big animal, there won’t be any parts left behind,” he says.

Gabrielle Malina, who runs First Crush Boston, a popular wine-focused pop-up, suggests budgeting one bottle of wine per guest—which comes down to about four glasses per guest. “Some people will drink less, some more, but this is on average the right amount in my experience,” she said. (We also have an equation that you can use for determining how much alcohol to buy for your party.)

And don’t skimp on nonalcoholic options, “even if it’s just soda water with lemon or lime,” Malina adds. Nonalcoholic beverages are a growing category of beer, wine, and spirits that don’t contain alcohol; we tasted nonalcoholic beer and spirits and were impressed by how delicious they’ve become.