Please advise me how to do a buffet???

[krisskross]

It's for my sons first Communion coming up, for around 11 to 16 adults and 8 children.
I've looked at pinterest but not sure what to do....it's inbetween lunch and dinner.

Just sandwiches so we don't need cutlery (we don't have enough and this is really worrying me!)

Also, most of our plates are chipped and mismatched..... Is it poss to get good quality disposable stuff that's not too expensive?

I Really am stressed about it, thanks all.

You ask about good quality disposable so I'm guessing you want it to be a bit more formal than using supermarket disposables?
If so I'd recommend hiring plates and platters and as much cutlery/serving spoons etc as you need. It's much less expensive than you'd expect and everything will match and look nice. For example: 10 buffet plates costs £1.40 plus vat to hire from our local catering supplies place if you collect yourself.

Yes the platters are great quality. Would highly recommend the ploughmans one! They do an Indian snack type one too but I've not tried it yet.

Thanks busy...went to Morrisons yesterday, unfortunately ours doesn't do them 😛. Thanks all for the ideas, I feel alot better...
Plate hire us a good one, thanks momb!

Supermarket sandwich platters are literally the sandwiches out of the chiller, taken off the shelves, taken out back to cut in half again, laid out on a plastic platter. Unless you need that level of convenience it is much cheaper to do something yourself.
You say that you aren't good at barbecues: what level of catering are you confident with: do you slow cook? do you bake? If there were a cheaper option would you go with sandwiches or something else?

Hi momb....not hugely confident in the entertaining dept!! And we need to be out of house at 945 with it all done..... Hence sandwiches. Thanks

If you are making your own sandwiches, you won't want to be making much else, you won't have time . In addition I'd do a massive cheese board, with grapes, dried apricots, walnuts & crackers. Or forget about the sandwiches and buy loads of baguettes to go with the cheeses have and do a board of different pates too. Dips & tortilla chips, carrot sticks (buy them pre-prepared, be kind to yourself) loads of mini sausages, you can make sticky sausages if you wanted to make them a bit more special, can be prepped the night before. Bowls of cherry or baby plum tomatoes.You could have pizza, quiche, pork pies but into quarters. I love catering and tend to make a lot of salads but first and foremost you need to enjoy the day and not be worrying about the food. Don't turn down any offers of help on the day! Good luck

Make sure quite a bit of the food is vegetarian, even if hardly anyone is vegetarian.

If you offer pork pie, sausages and ham sandwiches, it's all very samey so if there are cheese sandwiches or onion bhajis, people will go for those too.

Then if someone is vegetarian, or just doesn't want half a dozen different ways to eat pork, there will be hardly anything they can eat.

They sell big trays of made up sandwiches in Greggs and M&S too. M&S is also particularly good for pork pies and other salady bits and if you are only catering for smallish numbers, you can probably just buy things in the shop, rather than ordering in.

I love doing buffets, and I do things that are not always simple but one simple thing I do is 'mini pizza' - get a basic plain pizza from a supermarket, get a pastry cutter and cut them into tiny pizza - they go in the oven for about 10 mins, you can add other things to them if you want.