How long will 8 Year 7 boys take to get through a meal?

[brandnewnickname]

My DS's 12th birthday is coming up, and he wants to go out for a pizza with a few friends. If they all come, there will be eight of them altogether. Am just wondering how long to allow between parent drop off and pick up (assuming they all have a pizza and a pudding). I can (with help of DH) just about cope with supervising 8 boys for the duration of the meal, but don't want to be hanging around for much time afterwards with them getting bored and therefore wild! Anyone done this recently and got a feel for how long to allow?

TBH, I'd allow about 3 minutes.

Point taken, but I am banking on it taking some time for the waiter to take the orders and bring them to the table! Ditto for pudding!

Depends how busy the venue is otherwise, if busy I'd allow 1.5 hours, more like 1 hour if quieter. But just one hour with your mates isn't much.

I've done this at home twice in recent months - I have boys aged 12 and 11 with birthdays a month after each other - We had 6 boys each time and it was fine- they were actually no bother. We took them to the cinema and then brought them home for pizza/garlic bread/sausage rolls/chicken nuggets/grapes/strawberrys/cake and juice - they probably spent about 30-40 minutes at the table but that's because we only have one oven so were drip feeding the food. After the savoury stuff they played for a while outside or in the playroom - at one point they had a nerf war. Then they had their cake and played for a while longer - They came home from the cinema about 4pm and I kicked them out about 9pm but could have sent them home hours earlier if they'd been any bother :)

I did this last year for DS's 12th birthday. From everyone arriving to ordering/eating/pudding/etc it took about 2 hours. They were still eating pudding when the parents arrived to pick them up - but it was Saturday teatime so the pizza place was quite busy.