Posted by Carl Jones on March 01, 19100 at 08:28:31 :
In Reply to: Number of guests? posted by Jean Williams on March 01, 19100 at 07:41:14 :
: I know that there's a formula you can use to determine how many guests will show up. I saw it somewhere on the internet but can't find it now. Can anybody help me?
I don't doubt that someone has taken statistics and created a formula for what percentage show up for various parties, but let me share with you mine.
Company picnic :
company A
Guarantee: 400
Actual: 198
company B
Guarantee: 400
Actual: 402
Weddings
Client A
Guarantee: 300
Actual: 480
Client B
Guarantee: 300
Actual: 250
These are real examples in the past 6 months. There are many more and who knows???
Boy Scouts Banquet 1999
Guarantee: 700
Actual: 580
Boy Scouts Banquet 2000
Guarantee: 720
Actual: 734
You tell me???
There are too many factors and variables. Weather, speaker, entertainment, morale of the employees(disgruntled workers don't attend company Christmas parties), competing events, again, how could anyone give you anything but averages....
The way I do it is tell the client: Get RSVP's or in the case of ticket sales, they need to provide a place for each ticket sold in case the guest shows up. Besides, they collected the money and neither the host or the caterer should be out anything if they dont show and we can give the leftover food to the soup kitchen so it is not wasted.....
It is the CLIENTS responsibilty to give you accurate numbers, they NEVER need to underestimate! Let them know that when you run out of food due to them overbooking, you will have to let the guests know that you(the caterer) are not responsible. I am considering putting in my contract that they will have to make an announcement of the following: "We apologize to our caterer, Premier Catering, for underestimating our numbers, It is not their fault that we are running out of food and we apologize to you our guests for any inconvenience"
I think if they believed they would have to make such an announcement, they would reconsider before playing games with the numbers... (our chamber is bad about assuming that only 80% will show up so they give less numbers hoping our overages will take care of any extras)
In summary.... don't trust any formulas..
Blessings,
Carl