The per-guest figures for each format
Office breakfast: €11.90 to €25.60 per guest. The lower end is a simple pastry and hot drinks welcome; the upper end adds fresh fruit, freshly pressed juice, bread, savoury items and a wider spread.
Coffee break: €7.10 to €14.40 per guest per break (up to €23.40 for a savoury break or brunch). Remember that a training day or a seminar normally has two, so budget the day rather than the break.
Lunch buffet: €22.50 to €50.40 per guest. The variables are the number of hot dishes, whether a cheese course is included, and the level of the desserts.
Individual meal trays: €27.40 to €53.50 per tray, complete with starter, main, cheese, dessert, bread and cutlery.
Cocktail reception: €20.30 to €57.60 per guest, driven almost entirely by the number of pieces. Eight to ten pieces is a drinks reception; fourteen to eighteen replaces dinner.
Full seminar day: €72.20 to €123.40 per guest, covering welcome, two breaks, lunch and often a closing reception.
Why these are net figures
Every figure above is what you pay. VAT is not applicable under Article 293 B of the French General Tax Code, so there is no tax to add on top, and no difference between the quoted price and the invoiced price.
This matters when you are comparing quotes. A French competitor quoting excluding tax at €25 per guest for a buffet is not cheaper than a net price of €27: once 5.5 percent food VAT and 20 percent on service and alcohol are applied, the comparison flips. When you benchmark, make sure every number you are holding is on the same basis.
Delivery is inside these figures across Île-de-France, with the single exception of Seine-et-Marne (77), which carries a stated distance supplement. There is no service charge and no separate equipment rental for a standard delivered service; on-site set-up and furniture are optional and quoted separately, and disposable tableware is included.
Give us the format and the headcount, and get a written proposal with net prices and no tax to add.
Get my proposal →What actually moves the budget
Headcount moves it less than people expect. Fixed logistics are spread over more guests, so the price per guest falls slightly as the group grows, but the food cost dominates and does not compress much. Doubling the group roughly doubles the bill.
Format moves it enormously. The same fifty people cost around €400 as a coffee break, around €1,400 as a lunch buffet and around €1,900 as a full evening reception. Before negotiating the price of a format, check you have chosen the right format.
Three things add cost quickly: alcohol, on-site extras such as set-up, and anything served hot that has to stay hot. If the budget is tight, these are the levers to pull before reducing the quality or the quantity of the food, which is what guests actually notice.
The minimum order, and how to work with it
There is a €300 minimum order. For a lunch buffet or a reception this is never a constraint. For a small group, it can be: eight meal trays at €33.50 come to €268, which sits below the threshold.
The practical answer is to combine rather than inflate. Add the coffee break you were going to organise separately, add drinks, or add the fruit and pastries for the following morning. You reach the threshold with things you actually want rather than with padding.
If your event is genuinely small and one-off, a single order that covers both the morning and the lunch is usually the cleanest way to stay above the minimum without over-ordering food that will go to waste.
Building a budget that survives contact with reality
Start from the confirmed headcount, not the invitation list. Then add a margin of about ten percent on quantities, which absorbs the late arrivals without funding a second buffet.
Build the day rather than the item. A seminar is a welcome, two breaks, a lunch and sometimes a reception. Budgeting only the lunch and discovering the breaks afterwards is the classic way to overshoot by thirty percent.
Finally, write down the number that has to be approved and the number you would like to spend. In practice the second grows to meet the first, and having both explicit from the start is what stops the conversation reopening two days before the event.