Pricing guide
BBQ catering portions: how much meat per person
Under-cook and you run out in front of the client; over-cook and you eat the margin. BBQ portioning is a planning problem with a few reliable rules of thumb — here is how much cooked meat to plan per guest, why the raw weight is always higher, and how to turn pounds into a price.
The per-guest rule of thumb
Plan around a third to a half pound of cooked meat per adult when BBQ is the main event — toward a third when there are hearty sides and a crowd of light eaters, toward a half (or more) for a meat-forward spread or a hungry group. Multiple proteins do not add up: the same guest samples each, so split the per-person weight across them rather than stacking a half pound of every meat.
Raw to cooked: the yield that eats your margin
You buy raw and serve cooked, and low-and-slow BBQ loses a lot in between. Brisket can render down to roughly half its raw weight by the time it is trimmed and smoked; pork shoulder and chicken hold on to more, but never all of it. Buy against the cooked weight you need, scaled up by your own measured yield — planning off raw weight is how you come up short at the pit.
Turn pounds into a price
Once you know cooked pounds per guest and your yield, cost each protein by the served portion, add the sides and consumables, and quote per person. That way the client sees one clean number, and you know the plate actually pays — instead of discovering the shortfall when the second pan comes out.
Get exact costs from YOUR recipes
These are market ranges. CaterKit photographs your menu, costs every recipe from your ingredients, and prices the quote at your margin — free to start.