Stop The Holiday Madness! 5 Steps To Get Guests Through An Orderly Buffet Line

This fall, I attended a “chuckwagon” dinner and show with some family members in the Black Hills. I have decades of experience at big family celebrations, and never in my life have I witnessed such a miracle of people-moving efficiency outside of things you have to be licensed for, like driving. The giant hall containing the show must have held 250 guests, and the staff managed to feed everyone within minutes. It had such an efficient system that by the time I got back to my seat, my food was still hot.

When two dozen relatives packed into my house to celebrate my eldest daughter’s birthday a few weeks later, I figured this was the perfect time to try to apply what I had learned from the chuckwagon. 

Usually, serving time at my family gatherings — and probably at any family’s gatherings, for that matter — looks like a herd of buffalo crowding around a watering hole. But I am very pleased to say that applying a few basic principles of efficiency at this giant family gathering led to the shortest dishing-up period I have ever experienced in a group even half this size. This time, everyone’s food was still hot by the time they got back to their seats. 

As anyone who’s raised children can testify, it’s hard to understate the satisfaction of getting humans to be orderly and efficient. I hope to impart this satisfaction to you this holiday season with five simple principles for feeding a crowd. 

1. Organize Food and Dishes in Logical Order

My daughter requested butter chicken for dinner with garlic naan bread, so we laid out bowls, forks, rice, curry, and bread in a counterclockwise flow through our U-shaped kitchen. We chose counterclockwise because most people are right-handed. You may call it “righthanded privilege,” but I call it efficiency. 

If you aren’t building a dish by piling one food item onto another (as with curry), then start the flow with the cold and room-temperature items. This way, the hot food stays hot for as long as possible. Obviously, trays of turkey and bowls of mashed potatoes would be placed before dishes of gravy. Don’t make people reach backward past guests behind them in line to grab accouterment.

2. Pre-portion Dishes 

We pre-portioned the naan bread by cutting it into quarters. This way, people didn’t have to stop and rip it in halves or quarters themselves. They also tucked neatly into the bowl. 

Anything that can reasonably be pre-portioned should be. Don’t leave it up to a guest to wedge a spatula into a dish and cut out pieces if this can be done beforehand, shaving precious minutes off total dish-up time and thus preserving the quality of the meal. This holiday season, I’d like to try getting pre-sliced, individually packaged pads of butter like the kind served at diners to reduce mess and better facilitate buttering rolls and mashed potatoes.

3. Put All Foods in Multiple Serving Containers 

In our case, we had