After ordering pizza for many youth events, we have learned a few things: 1) Never say, “what kind of topping do you like?” 2) Never bring the pizza through the room where students are meeting. When the pizza arrives, the meeting is basically over.
Food is always an interesting issue – you need plenty, but you don’t want too much left over. Worse than having too much is running out. Memories of events are often centered around food. If’ there is plenty and it’s good stuff – it will help create an experience. If however it’s bad, slow or the food runs out before everyone has some, the memory will grow larger than you want it to! It will be talked about for years.
At one youth event, we accidentally used nacho cheese for macaroni and cheese. A couple students loved it. The other 300 didn’t like it all. That was about 6 years ago now. I still hear about it every year. In some ways it has become a legendary memory. In other ways, it’s a reminder of just how important food is. (Food is one of the five things that will never go out of style in ministry).
This formula can obviously be tweaked based on whether or not you have other sides (chips, fruit, salad) or not and whether this is for a meal or for an evening snack.
But here’s our tried and true formula… (Drumroll please)
Younger students / girls groups: Number of Attendees times 2 divided by 8 (standard number of slices in a large pizza). That’s how many pizzas you need to order.
Older students / all guys groups: Number of Attendees times 2.3 divided by 8 (standard number of slices in a large pizza). That’s how many pizzas you need to order.
If you are going with the standard one topping on each pizza – then here’s the breakdown: 40% pepp, 35% saus & 25% cheese.
Good luck!
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