Party Menu Maker

Write it here, then print it or save it as a PDF and send it round with the invitation. Sharing the menu in advance is how you find out about allergies and dietary needs while there is still time to cook something about it, rather than at the table.

Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free cover almost every request you will get, and nuts should be flagged because it is the allergy people expect to see marked. Five short codes on the page and a key at the bottom is enough — a menu covered in symbols stops being readable.

Yes, if any guest is vegetarian, and a side dish does not count. This tool checks for it and says so, because serving someone a plate of sides while everyone else eats a main is the single most common menu mistake and the easiest one to avoid.

For a sit-down dinner, one main with two sides is plenty. For a buffet or BBQ, offer two or three mains so people have a choice — and because a single dish leaves you no margin if something goes wrong in the kitchen.

Every part of it. The starting menus are a template, not an answer: rename any dish, add a description, change the dietary tags, delete what you're not cooking, rename the course headings, and add your own dishes to any section. You can also start from a blank menu.

No — that's a separate job, and it's what the party food calculator does. Write the menu here, then take the dish list over there to get purchase weights for your guest count.