Planning for a 100-Person Picnic

[Choirgirl21]

This is a little off the restaurant help topic, but I didn't have any luck with my google searches so I'm hoping you can help. My rescue group is having our annual picnic this Saturday. We've got about 100 people registered at this point (it is technically supposed to be all pre-registration). I need to determine how many sodas, bottles of water, and cookies to get for the group. Lunch is being catered by Red, Hot, & Blue so meals are already accounted for. This is during the day, at Carderock so we are not providing alcohol and while people can bring their own, I don't expect many will. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[jayandstacey]

This is a little off the restaurant help topic, but I didn't have any luck with my google searches so I'm hoping you can help. My rescue group is having our annual picnic this Saturday. We've got about 100 people registered at this point (it is technically supposed to be all pre-registration). I need to determine how many sodas, bottles of water, and cookies to get for the group. Lunch is being catered by Red, Hot, & Blue so meals are already accounted for. This is during the day, at Carderock so we are not providing alcohol and while people can bring their own, I don't expect many will. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Someone else may have a more scientific answer, but I'd go with 2 sodas and 2 large (or 3 small) cookies each. To the degree that you don't serve canned soda or bottled water, I'd figure 12 oz of whatever else you might bring (like iced tea or lemonade) to count as a soda. One failsafe is to bring a larger multi-gallon water jug or two and let people take what they will drink in addition to the sodas. Have an extra in the trunk.

You didn't mention how long the picnic will be or what activities might happen. If it is an active group and you'll do things like badmitton or a tug-of-war (in late Oct?) then you might add 3rd drink to each person, or at least those participating in those events. Likewise if people will be there longer than, say, 3 hours.

You also didn't mention the kid/adult ratio, but under 10 years old you could knock back to 1 drink and 1 large cookie.

Note that I believe with these numbers you'll have leftovers, but not so many that you couldn't use them yourself. (ie, you might have 50 drinks left from 200, and could just use them for your own purposes.)

Finally, if it is an annual picnic, I'd contact the person who may have done this prior and get their thoughts.

Have fun!! And while you might consider some hot beverages - coffee, tea, hot chocolate, cider...Also don't worry about pleasing everyone.

I'd consider:

60 diet sodas

30 regular sodas

1 big jug (like a few gallons) of unsweetened iced tea

1 big jug of water (spare in the trunk)

And maybe coffee service