Why I Built No Missed Steaks (A Party Planning Tool)

30 pounds of pork shoulder. For 10 people. My Friends and I built a smoker for our annual New Year's party at my parents' farm. We were so excited about the pulled pork that we forgot to do the math. Who eats 3 pounds of pork in one evening? Nobody. We had leftovers for weeks. I have a bunch of stories, that end basically the same: too much or too little food and drink for a party, a gathering, a dinner. Usually i would look beforehand how much to buy, but the answers were too vague or didn't work with the type of people that would attend. Why is it so hard to estimate, how much you need to provide?

The Problem

Everyone whos ever hosted a party knows the anxiety: have i bought enough? What if more people are vegetarian, than i thought? The issue that i've always had is that I'm very bad at estimating. And that leads to hungry guests or leftovers for breakfast for the rest of the week. There's usually no inbetween. And what of the food that doesnt keep well after the event? You: sick of lasagna - Money: wasted. At my last dinner party, I ran out of beer by 9 PM but had enough chili to feed everyone twice over. $60 in groceries, half of it went to waste. And if you google beforehand, you will notice vague ranges that don't take into account, what kind of event you're planning, the time of day and variety of guests that you will entertain.

My Journey

I decided enough is enough. First I looked at different Websites that touted to have the answers. What i found were different portion recommendations for each site. Recipe sites were different. They'd scale portions for guests, but assumed you were only serving one dish. What if I wanted to serve three? How do i calculate that? Of course i can cross reference the amount of meat that is in the recipe with the guidelines for how much an adult should eat in a sitting. I actually started building a spreadsheet. Party type, guest count, duration... it worked, but copy-pasting formulas before every party? There had to be a better way. That's why i decided to build a tool. Something simple, free, and actually helpful.

What I Built

No Missed Steaks (pun very much intended) is a free party planning calculator. You tell it what kind of event you're planning (birthday, BBQ etc.), how many guests you invited, how long you expect it to last and what time of day it starts. Using that information it gives you exact food quantities by category, Beverage recommendations and a printable shopping list. Heres what the calculator gave me for our New Years party, much more reasonable numbers (and a printable shopping list):

And that's it. No signup required. No ads. Just a tool that works.

Why Free?

Right now, it's completely free. No catch. I'm building this, because i need it myself. If it helps other people avoid my costly mistakes, even better. Eventually, I'll add premium features (saved party plans, PDF exports, that kind of thing). But the core calculator will always be free. For now I will continue building the features, that I need the most and hope it helps other people as well.

Give it a try

If you're planning a party, just try it:

Planning a party soon? Give it a try. Even if you're not, play around with it—calculate a ridiculous 500-person BBQ just to see what happens. I'd love your feedback:

What works? What's missing? What party type should I add next?

Reach me on X @DerRuettger Thanks for reading and happy planning!