Trek Meal Planning - How to make cooking for loads of people fun

[This post is outside of my normal posts, but I needed a place to share this information.  So here it is.]

Ideals

For Mealtime for a large church activity, such as a Trek, the goal is to come together to have fun.  Good food burns the memory of the positive moment into the attendees’ minds.  On the flip side, bad food, slow food, or not enough food can kill the best of activities.  As a youth, I participated in two Treks.  On one we had almost no food for a whole congregation full of football players. And despite a really good location and activity, that is the first thing I think about when I remember that activity 30 years later; so bad food leaves an impression.

 

Top Mistakes to Avoid 

Here is a list of my top food mistakes to avoid: 

• Food-Nazis: Avoid at all costs! Food-Nazis are when a person is assigned at each food item and serves kids as they walk through the line.  Let kids serve themselves. There is a mistaken belief that this will speed things up.  Instead, this wastes an entire side of a table that you can serve food on.  Also, if you are worried about kids taking too much food, you don't have enough food.  It also dampens the fun vibe of the food experience.  Just don't do it!
• Handmade (Homemade):  No one cares if it is handmade.  Every so often you have a food prep person who wants to make a handmade dressing or rolls or salsa or whatever. This almost always comes at the cost of speed.  If your meal is an hour late, no one cares if it was handmade or from a jar.  Good is good enough.  You can wow with variety and quantity.
• Being Late:  Food for a large number of people can be hard to prepare and delays happen if you are not careful.  Any goodwill for fantastic food will dissipate quickly with hungry kids waiting around. You will also throw off the schedule for the rest of the day’s activities.
• Running out of food:  Don't leave any one hungry.  Plan well then add 20% to whatever you’re buying.  If you can’t afford enough food, go for cheaper meal items.  Better a full belly of cereal than an empty egg pan, but good planning can let you have quantity and quality.
• Slow Service:  Similar to "being late" is serving too slow.   Waiting 20 minutes in a long line will ruin an experience.  Have enough serving tables to get people through fast.
• More details on these tips are bellow.

 

Meal Planning 

• Budget:  I use a simple budget for a multi-day activity.  For a nice meal, I plan on 4-5-6 .  $4 per person for breakfast, $5 per person for lunch, and $6 per person for dinner, but when I am on a budget you can get away with 3-4-5.
• Meal Choice:  Choose meals that are fun and easy to make.  Choose faster and more quantity over fancier.  Still try to break the trend of the same old foods you see year after year:
  
  
  
• Breakfasts: Pancakes are always easy but take lots of grill space to cook and everyone does them. If you do have pancakes, try spicing it up by having one grill add blueberries or chocolate chips.  On the back end, get a couple of different kinds of syrup or whip cream.  Breakfast sandwiches are fun, you can buy precooked egg rounds (like the golden arches), you can even buy bacon-rounds.  You can use English muffins or biscuits.  Or go biscuits and gravy, you can get warm-n-serve versions of both. If you have Mexican one night, the next morning you can do breakfast burritos and reuse toppings, cheese, and tortillas. 
  
  
• Lunch:  If you have had a stellar large breakfast, you can go easy on lunch.  At breakfast, set up a sandwich bar to make a sack lunch for later.  If so, offer a few kinds of bread, rolls, or croissants with a variety of deli meat and cheeses. Put some bacon out for sandwiches and you are a hero.  And offer several chip and dessert options.  If you want something warm or fun try beef stew and biscuits or soup and grilled cheese.

•  Dinner: Burgers and hot dogs are way overused. Mexican is always a good choice, tacos, fajitas, or nacho bar.  Precooked taco meat and fajita chicken is available at food suppliers.  If you want to cook your own, pre seasoned and sliced beef and chicken are good and save lots of time. Other fun ideas, are Philly cheesesteak, pulled pork sandwiches and brats. Grilled chicken sandwiches are a nice change of pace (add mozzarella and marinara to make it more fun) and you can have one table with meatballs to make meatballs subs. 
  
  
• Planning and Scaling.  What seems to be the most intimidating part of planning to serve a group in the 100’s, is how much food to buy and what are the serving sizes.  This is best managed with a good spreadsheet, which is a total life saver. Here is a link to my example, it is a bit chaotic, but you can get the idea of what I do.  A few tips to creating this spreadsheet. Organize the rows by meal and each item needed for the meal. Take portion size and multiply it by the number of people attending (put that in a cell you can easily change).  Then you know the total amount you need.  Divide the quantity in each box/can so you can tell how many boxes you need, round up.  Then you can simply change the number of attendees and all of your order quantities will be updated too.  To determine your portion size, I use my own eating experience as my benchmark.   For meat, I use a hamburger as the size example starting point.  I usually eat a quarter-pounder pretty easily.  My teenage boys can eat a double and lots of girls will eat half a burger.  So, if I am doing pulled-pork I would do .20 lbs of meat per person.   If you are doing burgers or dogs which have a specific number of pieces servings for each person.  Assume 25% will want seconds. Also use Google to find other odd bits of information, like how many Tablespoons of mayo are needed for a sandwich or how many ounces are in one tablespoon of mayo. Here are some short rules of thumb for other common items:
  
  
• Meat: 0.20 lb per person
• Chips: 8 people per full size bag
• 1.5 individual chip bags per person
• Salad (potatoes, egg, coleslaw):1/3 cup per person or .2 lbs
• 1.2 piece of fruit per person.
• Drink 24 oz per person
• Lunch meat 0.1 lb per person 
  
  
• Purchasing Food:  The top tool I recommend is to get a food service account with a restaurant supplyier. I use Nicholas and Co in Salt Lake, this does require an account/membership (which is free), though there is also US Food Chef Supply that is open to everyone.  Why a restaurant supplier?  You can get precut, precooked, unique foods, in large supplies you cannot get anywhere else, that are low cost and easy to prepare.   Cutting things is your biggest time and space sink.  Buying precut is awesome.   I am a big fan of precooked bacon for large groups. You can cook a lot of it fast.  Here is a list of cool items you can get:
  
  
• Precut fresh peppers and onion mix (fajitas or steak and cheese)
• Steak and cheese precut steak pucks (for cheesesteak sandwiched or gyros)
• Pre-cooked bacon (for breakfast or BLTs)
• Pre-sliced tomatoes and lettuce for sandwiches
• Scrambled egg mix (no shells in your breakfast)
• Pre-cooked sausage patties
• Southwest egg scramble mix (peppers, onions, and sausage to mix in with eggs, good for breakfast burritos)
• Pre-seasoned fajita meat, beef and chicken
• Pre-cooked taco meat.
• Restaurant quality beef patties (80-20 fat ratio and .2 lbs per patty)
• Boxes of tortilla chips and breads (Easy to store)
• Individual serving ice cream pucks
• Round bacon and sausages for breakfast sandwiches
• Lots of roll varieties
• Nice soup selections
  
  
• Purchasing Snacks:  To buy snacks and treats, Sam's Club is your place to go. They have a better variety than Costco and they have Hostess!  Sam’s executive membership will ship the snacks to your home for free.
  
  
• Variety: Get variety when you are buying large quantities.  Don’t buy 15 boxes of the normal Frito chip variety pack.  Get a couple of the bold mix, a few of the baked kinds, a couple of the hot variety, and some of the fancy chips with sea salt.  This small tweak will have kids loving you and takes almost no additional time.  Same with lunch meats and cheese types.  Don’t do the same type of bread, add some brioche buns, or croissants. If you are serving taco or fajitas, add some taco salad bowls and cilantro dressing onto one table, then you can have a taco salad if you want. Your food vendor should have plenty of variety. If you make pasta, get different kinds of sauces.
  
  
• Add flair:  For each meal look for a few added items to make it fun.  Have a chili station if you are serving hot dogs or add brats too.  Have a salsa, hot sauce variety table on Mexican night. Add blue cheese or thousand island dressing for burgers. Pepper jack cheese and coleslaw for pulled pork sandwiches.
  
  
  
• Fun stations:  There are a few things you can include with minimal effort to add more fun.  First, a PB&J table. If you arrive at a camp at 4:00 and dinner is at 7:00, you may have some hungry teenage boys. Set up a round table with peanut butter, jam, honey, several loaves of bread at 4:30 and invite anyone to grab a sandwich while waiting for dinner.  Another easy fun station is a cereal bar. Regardless of what you have for a hot breakfast, add a table with a mixture of cereals.  Don't go all old lady with 5 varieties of Super-Colon-Blow, get some of the cereals that mom won't buy, but don't get the small box variety packs, the cereals aren't that fun, and they are too expensive.   The Sam's club 3 cereal box can be fun and offer lots of variety.  But get some crazy ones with Marshmallows too and add a new kind each day. Have a few bland healthy cereals in there too.  Another nice little add on is a nacho table.  Just drop several boxes of nacho chips on a round table after your primary serving area with two or three chaffing dishes full of warm nacho cheese sauce.  This is a nice fun station for Mexican night or as an appetizer prior to an evening activity or speaker.
  
  
• Softer side: I am a big eggs and meat guy for breakfast, still one big success I have had was to include a Yogurt bar with breakfast. Buy a couple types of some large plain yogurts from Sam's Club (Like Greek vanilla) than add granola, and fruit (you can get raspberry crumble from a food vendor).  Put them on a round table in the breakfast area.  Another softer side tweak is to allow people to make their meal option into a salad.  Just add a large box of pre-chopped Romain lettuce (from your food vendor) dressing, and taco salad bowls on one serving table with whatever meat you are serving (chicken, pulled pork, taco beef).  Or you can add tortillas and lettuce to make wraps.
  
  
• Drinks: Though soda is fun, a large Gott cooler of lemonade or Gatorade works great and is affordable.  I do give Wal-mart rootbeer high marks for flavor and price.  One time you may want to break the handmade rule is rootbeer.  Homemade rootbeer, can be cheap to make and a large Gott cooler is easier to store than dozens of soda bottles.|
  
  

Meal Preparation

• Start schedule:  If you have a large cooking team.  It is a lot of work to coordinate everyone. Create a written cook schedule for each meal.  Start with the time you want the food ready (30 minutes before serving time), figure out how long it takes to cook an item or to cut it up, then figure out the start cooking time.  List how you want it cooked and what you want it placed it in to serve.  I use tins (1/3 size, 1/2 size, or full size).  Then assign a person on your committee to each item.  Post the work sheet after the end of the previous meal.  Then let your team be proactive and you can be there to answer questions that come up rather than having to get everyone moving.
  
  
• Food warmer:  the best investment I made was to buy a commercial food warmer that we powered with a generator.  It cost $300 on KSL Classified. This allows you to prepare food early and keep in tins in the warmer until serving time.  Then you can replenish the serving tables with warm food as needed. Look in your local newspaper classifieds and you can just resell it afterwards and break even.
  
  
  
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• Cooking Equipment:  Get plenty of cooking surfaces (camp chefs) or BBQ grills, to use like an oven to cook or reheat.  In using a grill to reheat, one trick is to put a full-sized tin with 1/2 inch of water in it on the grill. Then put the tin you are reheating in the big one. You make need a space at the bottom.  A few balls of foil can work or some spoons.  This keeps the bottoms from burning.  My favorite toy was to buy a large commercial grill from a restaurant 6' x 2', I then put it on a cart and modified it for propane.  It was a lot of work, but made cooking super-fast and now we have one for the next activity.  If you are in the Mapleton Utah West Stake, here are the grill instructions.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cooler trailer: A huge help for cooking for 550 people was a refrigerated trailer.  We had way too much food for coolers and I didn't have to worry about melting ice.  Taylor’s Trailers in Salt Lake rents them for under $1100 per week.  We also borrowed a coffin freezer and put it in a snowmobile trailer with a generator outside powering it.   This is good for extra ice for water coolers and for ice cream treats.
  
  
• Quartermaster:  If you have a lot of food for multi-days.  You could spend your whole time answering questions about where the food is kept.  Assign a quartermaster couple to help load the food in trailers and then they can help people find the food when it is time to cook. Prepare in disposable tins:  Prepare and serve most everything in disposable tins.  1) They are cheap. (2) they fit easily in a chaffing dish. (3) you can put them in a warmer, (4) You just throw them away when you are done or give away leftovers.  Don’t forget foil or foil lids and a Sharpie, so you know what it is in the tin.

Meal Serving

1. Serve yourself:  There is always that one person who wants to have an adult at each item to serve the food and police the food quantity, it is usually that mom who buys only bran cereals and still makes her teenage kids take naps.  Don't give in.  It is faster to serve on both sides of a table and let kids choose their own quantity.  Have two serving utensils for each item, to keep the line moving.
   
   
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   Table setup: Plan on serving about 100 people per table.  That is 50 per side.  You should have everyone served in 15 minutes.  And call people to get food in groups.  Create a diagram of the overall table layout and each table setup so your team can get everything setup without you having to direct step by step.
   
   
   
3. Serving order:  When you create the serving order, think of how you build a meal.  Plates first, then buns and tortillas next meats and toppings, do not make people go backwards.  Put utensils last, since they get in your way serving you own the food.  Have drink on a separate table in an area away from the serving line. Putting drinks out on tables in cups is the one exception to the food Nazi rule.
   
   
4. Keeping it warm:  Use chaffing pans and Sterno.  No one want cold food.  You can get a disposable set at Sam's club or on Amazon.
   
   
5. Seconds:  If done correctly there will be left over food.  Announce seconds a soon as the last group is done.  And don’t start cleaning up right away.  Let people eat and come back for more during the allotted mealtime.
   
   
6. Music:  I always recommend playing music at mealtimes.  it just adds to the fun.