School & Institution Catering: Quantities Per 100 Meals

School & Institution Catering: Quantities Per 100 Meals

Institutional catering is a different discipline from event catering. You are not cooking one impressive meal — you are cooking the same meal reliably, on time, every day, for a fixed roll. The numbers per head are smaller than event portions, and the equipment has to survive daily use rather than occasional use.

Per-head quantities for daily feeding

Item	Per person, per meal	Notes
Maize flour (ugali)	150–200 g	Lower end for children, higher for teenagers and adults
Rice (dry)	100–120 g	Yields roughly 300 g cooked
Beans / githeri (dry)	80–100 g	Soak overnight — it halves cooking time
Meat, bone-in	100–120 g	Portion by piece for fairness and cost control
Greens	100–150 g raw	Reduces dramatically once cooked
Cooking oil	10–15 ml	The line most often over-used and unmeasured
Drinking water	1 L per person per day	Separate from cooking water
Tea (where served)	200 ml	Plus milk and sugar

Worked daily requirement

For 200 people, one ugali-and-beans meal:

• Maize flour: 30–40 kg
• Beans, dry: 16–20 kg (soaked the night before)
• Greens: 20–30 kg raw
• Oil: 2–3 litres
• Drinking water: 200 litres

For 500 people, multiply by 2.5: roughly 75–100 kg of flour, 40–50 kg of beans, and 500 litres of drinking water a day. At that scale, water storage stops being a detail and becomes infrastructure.

Portion control is the whole cost story

In institutional catering, a small portion drift is a large annual cost. Fifteen grams of extra flour per head at 200 people is 3 kg a day — around 90 kg a month for no nutritional gain.

• Serve with a measured scoop, not a free hand. Standardise the utensil and the portion follows.
• Portion meat by piece, counted, not by eye.
• Weigh dry goods out per batch rather than pouring from the sack.
• Measure oil. It is the easiest ingredient to over-use and among the more expensive.
• Record daily usage against the roll. A written log is how you notice drift in week two instead of month three.

Equipment that survives daily service

Cooking

• Large heavy-gauge sufurias. Thin pots warp and burn at institutional volume. Buy heavy or buy twice.
• Pressure cookers for beans and githeri. At this scale the gas saving is substantial and daily.
• Long-handled stirring paddles — a domestic cooking spoon is not usable in a 50-litre pot.
• Graduated sizes so you are not heating a huge pot for a small side.

Serving

• Chafing dishes or insulated servers to hold food at temperature through a long serving window.
• Measured serving scoops — the portion-control tool.
• Stackable trays for carrying and for holding.
• Two serving spoons per dish, always, so service never stops.

Storage

• Airtight containers for all dry goods. At institutional volume, a weevil infestation is an expensive event, not an inconvenience.
• Off-floor shelving so pests and damp are visible and preventable.
• Labelled and dated, oldest at the front.
• Separate raw and cooked storage — non-negotiable.

Hygiene

• Colour-coded chopping boards and cloths
• Handwashing point separate from the washing-up sink
• Covered bins, emptied daily
• Separate cleaning equipment for kitchen and toilets

The timetable is the real constraint

A school kitchen has a hard deadline every single day. Working backwards from service:

1. Soak beans the night before. Skipping this adds an hour or more of gas to every bean day.
2. Start long items first thing — beans, tough meat.
3. Greens and ugali last, closest to service.
4. Light warmers 30 minutes before service, not at service.
5. Serve in two sittings if the space demands it, and hold the second sitting's food properly warm rather than cooking it later.
6. Wash down during the service lull, not all at the end.

Planning for interruptions

• Water: store at least a full day's need. A kitchen that cannot wash cannot serve.
• Gas: keep a spare cylinder connected or ready. Running out mid-service is not recoverable at this scale.
• Power: if anything in the process depends on electricity, know what happens without it.
• Staff absence: write the recipes and quantities down so the meal does not depend on one person's memory.

That last point matters more than it sounds. A kitchen where quantities live in one cook's head produces a different meal the day that cook is away.

Frequently asked questions

How much maize flour per person for ugali?

Around 150–200 g per person per meal — the lower end for children, higher for teenagers and adults.

How much food do I need for 200 people?

For ugali and beans: roughly 30–40 kg of maize flour, 16–20 kg of dry beans, 20–30 kg of greens and 2–3 litres of oil, plus 200 litres of drinking water.

How much rice per person?

About 100–120 g dry, which yields roughly 300 g cooked.

How do I control portions?

Serve with a measured scoop, portion meat by counted piece, weigh dry goods per batch, and log daily usage against the roll.

Are pressure cookers worth it at scale?

Yes. Beans and githeri are cooked daily in most institutions, and the gas saving compounds every day.

Why soak beans overnight?

It roughly halves cooking time, which is a direct daily saving in gas and in kitchen hours.

How much drinking water per person per day?

At least one litre, stored separately from cooking water.

Equip the kitchen

See heavy-gauge pots and sufurias, pressure cookers, chafing dishes and warmers, serving trays, scoops and catering supplies, airtight dry storage, knives and boards and cleaning equipment. Supplying a school or institution? Send us your roll number on WhatsApp and we will size the order.