Help - Cooking for 60 - Advice needed

In all honesty this sounds like a disaster in the making! I normally wouldn't say this, but in this situation in might be best for him to cook in advance and reheat the day of the event - that way all the troubles will be behind him come serving time. What kind of smoker? Is the breakdown pretty even between men and women? I have learned that it makes a big difference.

I have found that I usually get about 50% yield from pork butts, and allowing 3-4 servings per pound of cooked seems to work pretty well. In other words, 15# cooked gets you 60 1/4# servings of pork, so you'd cook 30# raw to start with. With ribs also on offer, I doubt he'd want to cook 60 servings of PP.

Folks with more experience than I have will hopefully come along and shed some light on how it goes with multiple meats, servings per rack of ribs, etc.

If there are tons of side dishes I would suggest going with a 4 oz serving of PPork and two bones per adult.

The 4 oz cooked portion requires an 8 oz raw amount, times 60 servings equals 480 raw oz (30 lbs). We keep our calculations in ounces since the size of butts vary. He should then decide if he wants any "buffer". Depending on the type of clientele (older folks, athletes, etc) we buffer up this raw total by 10-15-20%, especially if it is self serve, to avoid running out. Of course this "buffer" is calculated into the price quoted to the customer.

As for ribs we usually ensure that the customer receives two "full length" ribs per serving. i.e. if purchasing Spare Ribs we usually cut them down to St Louis style and then cut off the smaller 2-3 bones at the end so that all of the ribs we serve are approx the same length. The remaining "cuttings" can be prepared as burnt ends if desired. Again the FULL cost of the raw product is used to calculate the price to the customer since we have no other means of using any leftover product.