Quantities

How much chili do you need for 100 people?

For chili as the main dish, plan on 3 gallons for 100 people — about 6 fluid ounces a head, plus ten per cent so the last person in line is not handed an empty bowl. If the chili is a topping for baked potatoes or nachos rather than the meal itself, halve it to 1.5 gallons.

Three gallons is 384 fluid ounces. Supermarket chili comes in 15 oz cans, so that is 26 cans. Made from scratch it is roughly 12 quarts, which is three large crock pots running at once — and crock pot capacity, not the recipe, is usually what limits a church supper or a school chili night.

The whole table, for 100 people

Package sizes are the ones actually stocked in American supermarkets rather than catering sizes: shredded cheese comes in 8 oz, 6 oz and 32 oz; sour cream in 16 oz, 8 oz and 12 oz; canned chili in 15 oz, 15.5 oz and 10 oz.

Why six ounces a head

A restaurant cup of chili is 8 oz and a bowl is 12 oz. At a serve-yourself event most people take less than they would order, because there is cornbread, there is salad, and there is a queue behind them. Six ounces is the number that comes out about right when the chili is the centre of the meal and there are two or three sides.

It moves with the crowd. Teenagers and a sports banquet eat closer to 8 oz a head. A church lunch with a full dessert table eats closer to 5. If you are choosing between running out and having a gallon left over, have the gallon left over: chili is the one dish everybody is happy to take home.

What actually goes wrong

• Not enough heat, not enough chili. Three crock pots on one circuit is how a breaker trips twenty minutes before serving. Check what else is on that wall.
• Toppings run out before the chili does. Cheese and sour cream go faster than people expect — the ounce a head above is a floor, not a target.
• Bowls are the thing you forget. Buy ten per cent over the headcount, not exactly the headcount: people take a second bowl and some take a clean one for dessert.
• Vegetarian chili is an afterthought. One crock pot of it covers a surprising share of a modern school crowd, and it is the single most appreciated thing on the table.

If you are organizing this with other people

The arithmetic above is the easy half. The hard half is turning it into asks that one person can carry, keeping track of who said they would bring what, and reminding them before the day — which is what Event Wranglr does. You describe the event in a sentence, it works out the quantities and the package counts, and it produces a sign-up sheet your volunteers claim from a link with no account and no advertising.

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