Hey all!
So a little background - We're having our wedding in raw space old warehouse/factory and we're doing a lot of uncoventional things as it suits our style. So food is next up on what we need to sort out - we're in Brooklyn and our whole idea is to really highlight our area so we wanted to have 2-3 local restaurants of different cuisines cater the wedding. We definitely want our local BBQ place, our local fancy pizza/pasta joint and perhaps an asian or vegeterian restaurant. The wedding will be buffet and we plan to hire a serving staff as I know portion control is a concern with buffets (guests usually plate more than they'll actually eat, or so I've read)
What I'm curious about is has anyone ever done something like this and how do we estimate our head counts? We're planning on roughly 200 people. Right now I have budgeted enough for 120 from each restaurant - so 120 for BBQ, 120 for pizza/pasta and 120 for asian/vegetarian - so essentially enough food for 360 people - this kind of seems excessive but I also know people will most likely want a little from each and people will probably get more than they can actually eat as they want to try everything. I also want to account for if say the BBQ is a hit that we don't run out of one option completely. We're on a budget so I don't want to order wayyy too much but we don't want to order too little either - any leftovers I'd hope we certainly be donated to local shelters. I'm happy to also consult the restaurants on this - let them know we have 200 guests but other restaurants providing food but was hoping to have some info to go into the conversation with.
There's a bunch of complicated things with this plan so I'm going to research it thoroughly - I'm also going to contact traditional caterers and ask about them doing stations options but I do really want to highlight our local restaurants. Would love to get advice! Thanks!
