Feeding construction workers
 

I am scheduled to talk with a lady Monday morning from a construction company that is doing a big annex on our local hospital. She said in her phone message that it would be 50-60 workers for lunch. Does anybody have experience in feeding groups like this and have an idea of how much to plan for versus a normal group? Thanks for the help and Happy Easter.

Double!

Sled's right, double it.

Double

I am not gonna suggest anything but double it, but, out here, I have noticed, especially on warm days, that construction workers eat fairly moderately and actually eat less than many office workers at lunch. I think it has to do with knowing they have to get back to work. Many of the Mexican and Southwest guys actually eat a lot of fruit at lunch.

These are meals that they bring with them.

Workers have the "free schwag" mentality. If it's there, they'll eat it. All of it. Why? Because it's free and they rarely get anything like this.

If the customer balks at a double price, I would suggest a clamshell, pre portioned meal. It'll cost more than a regular meal, but less than double.

True on the free schwag thing, I certainly have experience that. Like I said, I agree with doubling it.

8oz-10oz meat per, plus 5 oz of sides, 3 per. In my world, about $16 a head.

Thanks, folks. Double, it is!

I work in construction AND cater so here's the deal: the boss is treating his workers to a nice meal as a reward, so if there are leftovers the crew usually gets first dibs. Most guys over 30 don't really eat that much at lunch, but the young ones can really put it away. Also, they all have coolers (not many of the old style lunchboxes on the jobsite) so they are equipped to pack food home. If you have some extra ice packs to send home with the leftovers to get the food out of the danger zone, that would be a very nice thing also.

Construction catering
 

I talked with the lady this week and discussed the eating habits of this vocation. She was full aware of their appetites and said just quote my standard per head price for a lunch for the items they wanted and that they would give me a per head number that they typically adjust for the crowd they are feeding as some office staff eat as well., She was in complete agreement that the most horrible thing that could happen would be a food outage. What she does is takes the actual number of folks eating and doubles the amount for laborers. Say it's 40 people eating and 30 are labor=10 normal and 30 double for a total of 70 times my per head rate. It was cool that she knew what she was dealing with since they do this a lot and was extremely sensitive to not running out of food. She said tell me how much per head and she would be responsible for making sure she bought enough chow. It's a different twist than what I have read on here and what had occurred to me as a way of approaching the process. Her thinking was just "buy 2 meals for the big eaters", just like you do for your 13 year old boy. Made my task easier. Thanks to all of you for your input.

Double, assuming you are serving everything and nothing is self serve, especially the cookies..