The three formats and their piece counts
Drinks reception, one to one and a half hours, held before dinner or before people leave: eight to ten pieces per guest, mostly savoury, with two or three sweet at the end.
Afterwork or extended reception, two to three hours, where guests will not eat afterwards in any serious way: twelve to fourteen pieces per guest, with a mix of cold and hot savoury and a small sweet finish.
Cocktail dinner, replacing dinner entirely: fourteen to eighteen pieces per guest, including at least four or five hot and substantial items. Below fourteen pieces, a reception billed as dinner leaves people hungry, and they notice.
The timing rule that matters more than the count
Guests eat most in the first forty-five minutes. Whatever the total, the first wave needs to be generous, because a reception that opens thinly reads as under-catered even if the same total arrives later.
French corporate receptions start late by British or American standards, usually between 18:30 and 19:30, and the room fills over the first thirty minutes rather than at the stated time. Schedule the set-up to be finished fifteen minutes before the invitation time, not at it.
Plan the sweet items for the last third. Bringing them out early signals that the reception is ending, and a room that thinks the reception is ending starts leaving.
Tell us the headcount, the start time and how long it runs, and we will size the piece count for you.
Get a reception quote →Drinks quantities
For a one and a half hour reception, allow two to three drinks per guest. For a three hour reception, four to five. A standard 75 cl bottle pours six to seven glasses, so fifty guests over ninety minutes need roughly eighteen to twenty-two bottles across all drinks combined.
Allow at least a third of the volume for soft drinks and water. That proportion is rising fast in French corporate settings, and a reception with one lonely bottle of sparkling water looks careless rather than sober.
If alcohol is served, ice is the item most often forgotten and the one that is impossible to improvise. Decide who is providing it, in what quantity, and where it will be stored, before the day.
Layout and flow
One serving point per fifty guests is the working rule. Beyond that, a queue forms, and a queue at a standing reception destroys the mingling that the format exists to create.
High tables matter more than they sound. Guests holding a glass and a plate need somewhere to put one of them down. Allow one high table per eight to ten guests, and place them away from the food rather than next to it, so people move.
Keep a clear circulation path around the serving table. The most common layout error in Paris offices is pushing the buffet against a wall in a corner, which turns the whole reception into a bottleneck at one end of the room.
Budget and what drives it
Plan on €20.30 to €57.60 per guest depending on the piece count and the level of the selection. The piece count is the dominant variable: moving from ten pieces to sixteen is close to a sixty percent increase in the food line.
Hot pieces cost more than cold ones, both to produce and to serve, because they need holding equipment and a shorter window. A mix weighted towards cold with a few well-chosen hot items is usually better value than a hot-heavy selection that arrives lukewarm.
On-site set-up and high tables (above 100 guests) are quoted separately; disposable tableware and cups are included. We do not provide waiting staff: everything is delivered ready to serve and guests help themselves.