Decide first whether it replaces dinner
This is the only decision that really changes the plan. An event starting at 19:00 and running to 22:00 replaces dinner whether you intended it to or not, and catering it as a drinks reception guarantees a room of hungry people leaving early to eat.
If it replaces dinner: fourteen to eighteen pieces per guest, with at least four or five hot and substantial items, and a proper sweet finish. If it is genuinely a drink before people go on elsewhere: eight to ten pieces, mostly savoury, and a clear end time on the invitation.
Say which it is on the invitation. Guests plan their evening around it, and the difference between a room that stays and a room that empties at 20:30 is usually that one line.
The December rush is real
Paris corporate December is concentrated into roughly three weeks, and the first two weeks of the month are the busiest. Venues, dates and delivery slots go early, and the last fortnight before Christmas is the point at which choice disappears rather than the point at which you start looking.
Book the date first and the menu later. The date is the scarce resource; the menu can be finalised against a confirmed slot right up to the ordering lead time.
If your event has to be in December, a Tuesday or a Wednesday gives you far more room than a Thursday. Thursday is the default French corporate party night, which is exactly why it is the one that is gone first.
Give us the date, the headcount and the start time, and we will size the reception with you.
Plan my event →Quantities and timing for an evening
Guests eat most in the first forty-five minutes. Weight the opening generously: a reception that opens thinly reads as under-catered no matter what arrives later.
Drinks: two to three per guest over ninety minutes, four to five over three hours. Reserve at least a third of the volume for soft drinks and water, and settle who is providing ice before the day, because it cannot be improvised.
French corporate evenings start between 18:30 and 19:30 and fill over the first half hour. Schedule the set-up to be complete fifteen minutes before the invitation time, and keep the sweet items back for the final third so you are not signalling the end at 20:00.
The room and the flow
One serving point per fifty guests, and high tables at roughly one per eight to ten people. Guests holding a glass and a plate need somewhere to put one down, and a room without high tables empties towards whatever flat surface exists.
Place the high tables away from the food rather than beside it, so the room circulates. Put them next to the buffet and you have built a permanent crowd at one end.
Check the cloakroom situation in advance for a winter event. Fifty coats with nowhere to go is the detail that makes a Paris December reception feel improvised regardless of how good the food is.
Budget, and the options worth paying for
Plan on €20.30 to €57.60 per guest for the food, driven mainly by the piece count. A launch or an end-of-year event usually sits in the upper half of that range because it replaces dinner.
Not included by default: on-site buffet set-up and high tables (above 100 guests), both quoted separately. Disposable tableware is included. We do not cook on site and do not provide waiting staff.
Above one hundred guests, the request is a coordination job rather than an order: delivery windows, serving points, set-up and layout all need deciding. Allow 48 hours from one hundred guests, three days from five hundred, four from a thousand, five at two thousand and a week beyond, and expect a conversation rather than a one-click confirmation.