Cheapest way to feed a group of people? Please help me come up with some ideas!!!?

Question

I'm trying to think of snack/lunch/dinner ideas for the club I'm in at my University.

Here are the things I'm trying to keep in mind.

-Easily and not too time consuming to make

-Can feed between 8 and 20 people, depending on the event

-We have a couple vegetarians and one person who cannot eat dairy

-It would be awesome if the food was fairly easy to transport. (I do have a crock pot to keep it warm)

-I have access to Costco, Safeway/Vons, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and a bunch of random smaller stores

Here are some of my ideas:

-Pasta dinner with red sauce (the kind that comes in a jar, not homemade, that takes too much time)

-Ice cream desert, don't they have those big tubs of ice cream at Costco? Is it a better deal to do something like this over ice cream sandwiches and Popsicles?

-What about a breakfast? With oatmeal? or Pancakes?

Thank you so much in advance for your ideas!!! I really appreciate the help. I don't have a great concept of how much stuff costs or the cheapest fastest meal to feed a group.

Answer 1

write out your sample menus and then go shopping.  At the store, you can price each item and also on each item will be typical servings it contains and you can price per person that way.  It will take time but that is the best I can suggest.  Besides, look at it as a learning experience.  you will only have to do it once to price out a couple of menus and then you will have the info for another time.

Answer 2

Pancake breakfasts and spaghetti dinners are popular fund raising events for that very reason - it's easy and inexpensive to feed many people, and there are few dietary restrictions that would put people off (vegetarian, low-fat, etc).

Answer 3

Pasta (Alfredo with no meat, if so have like some meatballs on the side from like Sam's, pre-made) and Bread sticks that you can easily heat up in a small microwave or just serve it from the package. (you can also cut it up in lil' bite size pieces).  

Answer 4

Hot Dogs, they're always cheap as is the buns.

Chicken legs and thighs are always reasonable too

Spaghetti and Sauce is usually pretty cheap, so is the materials for garlic bread. also you said you have a crock pot  you can get frozen meatballs too for pretty reasonable for the ones wanting meatballs

~as for sides you can get like pasta salad mixes in a box and they're like $.99 at most stores my mom makes them and usually puts some ranch in with cubes of cheese and tomato and green  onion it's so good, but even without that it's still good,

~or you can just get pasta and boil it with butter and put either real chopped up garlic or garlic salt and parm. cheese in it, which is really good,

~or rice is usually pretty inexpensive you can make white rice or lipton has those rice sides or if you go to Wal-Mart they have the great value brand for less than the Lipton one and you can get a few of those

~Veggies are ususally pretty cheap like corn on the cob or those little bitty corn on the cobs, Wal-Mart usually has the Great Value for like $.99

~Bread is always a good filler as well and everyone likes it as well as it's affordable such as Hawaiin Sweet is good.

~ Breakfast you can usually find pretty cheap sausage links and biscuits (everyone loves biscuits) pancake mix is cheap but it'll take a while to do enough of that for everyone, either oatmeal or some cheap boxes of cereal, or bagels and some cream cheese and fruit.

~Monkey bread take biscuits cut them into fours fill a zip loc baggie with sugar and cinnamon and toss them into it covering each piece, grease a bundt pan and layer the pieces into until it's about half way full, sprinkle the mixture ontop along with some melted butter and bake until they're done.

~Drinks Kool-Aid, Iced Tea, Water, Lemonade

~Desert Ice Creams a given or make cheap pies they have good recipes on the internet one I have is Lemon Ice Box Pie which u need

1 tub of whipped topping

1 sm. can of evaporated milk

and lemon juice until it has the desired lemon flavor mix together and spread into a graham cracker pie crust and refridgerate until firm

it's not really hard you don't always have to use name brand things all you're paying for is the advertising, just use cheap off brand supplies and you'll do alright.

Answer 5

it aint on your idea list but how about do the pizza mia from pizza hut   (get 3 large pizzas for around 12-18 dollars

Answer 6

Try this -

Appetizer - Lil smokies in the crock pot with 1 bottle BBQ sauce and 1 jar 16oz Grape Jelly. (Buy 3 or 4 packages, or do already made meatballs.)

Meal - Salad Buffet & Make some pulled BBQ pork/chicken/beef sandwhich's. (BBQ meat can be stored in crock pot)

Note - could make a big pot of chili too*

Desert - Ice cream is fine. Do cones/chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup..

And call it a night.

Also, As far as breakfast is concerned...Hmm..I would do pancakes and link sausage..but is $$ is the case, then go with ground sausage and make your own patties.