Buffet calculator

How much food do you actually need for fifteen guests? For thirty? Cook and Design’s buffet calculator tells you, by category, with the kind of precision that prevents both panic-buying and embarrassing shortages. Plug in the number of guests, the duration of your event, the type of crowd (light eaters, big appetites, mixed) and the format (cocktail, sit-down buffet, family-style), and the tool returns a clean breakdown of how many grams of protein, how many sides, how many breads, how much salad and how many desserts you should plan per person. The calculator is calibrated from actual catering data and the kind of soft rules that home entertainers learn after the third time they ran out of bread at 9pm. Use it to plan a small dinner, a Thanksgiving table, a birthday or a wedding lunch — and stop guessing whether you have enough.