Quantities

Teacher appreciation lunch for 75 staff: how much of everything?

For a build-your-own sandwich lunch for 75 staff, plan on 15.5 lb of deli meat, 83 rolls, 5.2 lb of sliced cheese and 7.7 lb of salad greens. That is 3 oz of meat a head, one roll each, and ten per cent spare so the last lunch period is not left with the ends.

This is the format most PTAs land on for a staff appreciation lunch: a sandwich bar with a green salad, chips, drinks and something sweet, set out in the staff lounge for the whole of the lunch periods. Teachers eat in shifts between classes, so the food is out for two or three hours and the people who come last matter as much as the people who come first. Every amount below is sized for that.

The whole table, for 75 staff

Package sizes are the ones actually stocked in American supermarkets rather than catering sizes: deli turkey and ham in 1 lb, 8 oz and 9 oz; sliced cheese in 8 oz, 1 lb and 7 oz; sandwich rolls in packs of 4, 6 and 8; salad greens in 4 oz, 5 oz and 16 oz. Loose tomatoes, gluten-free rolls and bagged ice are common sizes rather than figures from our shelf data.

Why these amounts

Three ounces of deli meat makes one full sandwich. Most adults at a work lunch make one and do not go back, because the next class starts in twenty minutes. The ten per cent spare is for the handful who make a second half, and for the tray that gets knocked.

Not all 75 will come. Somebody is out sick, somebody has lunch duty and eats at their desk, somebody is on a field trip. Do not plan for that. The people who miss it are the ones who most want a plate saved, and a lunch that runs out is remembered much longer than leftovers are.

Plan for two kinds of eater from the start. Vegetarians build a sandwich from cheese, lettuce, tomato and pickles, which works if the cheese is not all sitting under the ham. Put it on its own tray. Gluten-free rolls go in their own bag, labelled, and next to their own knife, or they will be gone by the second lunch period to people who could have eaten anything.

What actually goes wrong

• The last lunch period gets the ends. Put out a third of the meat, cheese and rolls at the start, and keep the rest in the fridge. Refill before each period, not when the tray is empty.
• Cold food sits out for three hours. Two hours at room temperature is the limit for deli meat and mayonnaise. Set the meat, cheese and salad on trays over ice, and keep the refills cold until they go out.
• The headcount is only the teachers. Count the office staff, the custodians, the aides, the cafeteria team and the nurse. They are the people most often left out of a staff appreciation lunch, and they notice.
• Too much dessert and not enough protein. Parents love signing up for cookies. Sign-ups for 5 lb of turkey are slower. Fill the protein first and cap the desserts.
• Nothing to serve with. Tongs for the meat and cheese, knives for spreading, a spoon in each condiment, salad servers. Somebody has to bring them, so put them on the list.

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 lunch in a sentence, it works out the quantities and the package counts, and it produces a sign-up sheet your parents claim from a link with no account and no advertising. A parent can take three of the ten packs of turkey and leave the rest on the sheet for somebody else.

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