Party food & catering planner. This site has planned everything around the meal — the balloons, the paper, the drinks, the dessert, the toasts, the photos. Nobody planned the actual food. So here it is: pick the occasion and your stations, set the dietary mix, and get honest portion math (ounces, pounds and the seconds buffer), a real server count, per-guest cost, a live grazing-board preview, and a printable caterer's brief Isabella can hand straight to the kitchen.
The occasion sets the appetite and the seconds buffer; the guest count sets every portion on this page. Set the dietary mix and the tool tells you exactly how many real plates — not garnishes — to make.
Move these and the plate counts change live. Isabella's rule: the dietary plate is cooked and plated with the same care as the main one — it just arrives without anyone having to announce themselves.
Pick the linen palette first — every station inherits it. Then choose the stations you're serving; each one prices and portions itself by the guest count above.
A live top-down proof of the table in your palette — every station laid out with its per-guest portion, plus the dietary cards that go on the board. What you see is what gets set.
Food is a lower-margin game than balloons — but it's the reason clients book you at all. Here's the honest math: what the client pays, what the food and the servers cost, and what's left.
It always did the hard part of a party; it just never had a page for it. A guest walks in, reads the welcome sign, finds their seat, and then the single thing they judge the whole night on is the food. The Main Course plans the meal in the same palette and the same brain as the balloons, so the table looks like it belongs to the room — and nobody runs out.
Two numbers: ounces per guest (set by the station — a grazing board is ~6 oz, a BBQ spread is ~16) and a seconds buffer (default 12%) because the second pass at a grazing table is real and always underestimated. The tool multiplies it out, adds the occasion's appetite factor, and gives you pounds to buy, not vibes.
Because "there's a salad" is not a plate, and it's the fastest way to lose a guest's trust. The tool turns your dietary percentages into real counts — N vegan, N gluten-free, N nut-aware — and Isabella makes each one properly, labels it on a card, and hands it over without a scene. The card is the point: a guest with an allergy should never have to play a game of questions at a buffet.
A grazing table is a feast for the eyes: boards, bowls, no heat, no queue — guests pick at it for hours. A hot buffet is a meal: two mains, two sides, chafing dishes and a line. Most parties want a grazing board first, then one hot station once people have had a drink. Pick both here and the tool prices them together.
For a hot station, yes — one per 25 guests keeps a buffet moving and a chafing dish full. Grazing tables need about half that: mostly someone who refills and resets. Corporate parties need more than either, because nobody sits down and everything is eaten standing up, one hand free.
Yes — choose the palette closest to your decor and the linen under the food echoes the rest of the room, so the table looks like it was designed on the same afternoon as the balloons. Then take the whole plan to Isabella with the Lookbook and the Sip Station, and the food and the drinks arrive as one menu.
The Main Course plans the meal. These fill in everything that happens around the table:
She'll firm up the portions, confirm the dietary plates and lock the date. Replies within 24 hours.