How Much Meat?
The question before every cookout: how much do I buy? Tell it how many mouths you're feeding and how hungry they are, pick your proteins, and it works out the raw weight to put in your cart — cooking loss, bone and shrink all baked in. No more running out at 2 o'clock or eating brisket for a week.
Who's coming?
How hungry is this crowd?
What are you serving? (pick one or a few — they'll share the plate)
How the math works
No mystery here — just the rules of thumb every caterer uses, done for you.
~⅓ lb cooked per adult
The catering baseline for a main alongside sides is about 5–6 oz of cooked meat per adult. Kids eat roughly half. Pick "hungry" and it climbs toward ½ lb each.
Cook loss is real
Raw weight is not plate weight. Brisket loses ~50%, pulled pork ~40–45%, whole birds a third to bone and shrink. These numbers are what to buy, not what lands on the plate.
Sharing the plate
Serving two or three meats? They split one portion, not stack up — so total meat stays sensible. Want a true sampler feast where everyone tries everything? Nudge the appetite up a notch.
Round up & relax
Leftover brisket freezes, reheats, and becomes tacos, hash and burnt-end beans. Nobody ever complained about too much BBQ — when in doubt, buy the bigger cut.
More pitmaster tools
Now you know how much — here's how long and how hot.