Guest count on its own is a bad planning input. Here is what actually determines how much food you need.
This is the question we get most, and the honest answer is that guest count on its own is not enough to plan from. Two events with 100 guests each can need noticeably different amounts of food. What matters is who is coming, what time it is, and how long they will be standing around.
The baseline
Most adults eat one to one and a half burgers. Plan on the higher end and you will not run short. Some people have one and are done, some have two, and it averages out around one and a quarter across a normal crowd.
Kids eat roughly half of what an adult eats. If your headcount includes a lot of children, like a family reunion or a graduation party or a company family day, then counting them as full adults will leave you with a lot of food nobody wanted. Give us the split when you tell us your headcount and we will plan for it properly.
Time of day changes everything
An outdoor afternoon event has the highest appetite of anything we cook. People have been in the sun, they have had a drink, they have been standing up, and they eat more. A two o'clock backyard party in June will go through more food per head than an evening reception with the same number of people.
Evening events, especially anything after a ceremony or a formal part of the day, tend to eat less per person. People have already eaten something. They are sitting down, they are talking, and half of them are not going back for a second burger. A rehearsal dinner is the clearest example: high satisfaction, lower volume.
Event length is the other multiplier. A one-hour lunch is one round of food. A three-hour afternoon with people arriving over the first hour is closer to one and a half rounds, because there is no single serving moment. People eat when they show up and then some of them eat again. Longer event, more food, every time.
The station rule
Here is the operational number that actually decides how your event feels: one grill station per 75 guests. That is what we use when we quote, and it is not a rough guide, it is the limit of what one station can put out hot and continuously.
At 40 guests you are on one station comfortably. Food comes off continuously, nobody waits, and the grill has enough slack that people can eat whenever they are ready.
At 100 guests you are on two stations. You could physically cook 100 burgers on one, but not without pre-cooking a batch and holding it in a pan, which is exactly the thing that makes catered burgers disappointing. Two stations means every burger goes from grill to plate.
At 200 guests, three stations. At 300, four. The maths is simple, and we add stations rather than stretch one, because a stretched station is not a saving. It is a queue.
Why stretching a station does not save money
When one station is asked to feed more than about 75 people, one of two things happens. Either a line forms and stays formed for the whole service window, or the crew starts cooking ahead and holding food. Neither is what you paid for.
A queue is worse than it sounds at an event. People stop mingling and start standing in line. The grill goes from being a place people gather to being an obstacle between them and dinner. At a corporate picnic with a hard finish time, a 25-minute line can eat a quarter of your window.
Cooking ahead is the other failure mode, and it is the quieter one. The food still arrives, it is just no longer a burger straight off the grill. The cheese has set, the bun has gone soft, and the reason you hired an on-site grill in the first place has evaporated.
What to tell us
Three things let us plan accurately: your headcount with an adults-and-kids split, the time of day, and how long you want service to run. Two hours is standard and covers most events. If your timeline is longer, say so up front and we will staff for it at $300 per hour per station rather than trying to stretch what is there.
Give us those three things on the order form along with your date and location, and we will tell you exactly how many stations your event needs and what it comes to.