Large Event Planning
I. Cost Analysis for Feasts

Measure length and breadth of hall, and the size of the trestle tables available; and using a scale of l/3 or 1/2 inch to the foot, cut out a piece of newspaper to the scaled-down shape of the hall. Using the same scale, cut out table-shapes as follows: Draw size of the table to scale, and add two feet on each side (plus two feet at the ends if people will be seated then these are placed side by side, there will be four feet between the tables, allowing room for chairs, people sitting and getting up, etc. (Fig. 1). These shapes can be placed on the piece of paper that represents the hall, leaving aisles down the middle for serving, and any open spaces that the hall's fire-regulations require. (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Two tentative floor layouts for Adiantum's 1980 Twelfth Night Feast.

8 + 1 tables with 10 people + 14 tables joined at one end so they have only 9 people each + 4 tables w/4 (people 1 side only) for high table = 232 people (16 at high table.)

6 tables with 10 people + 4 tables with 4 (seated on one side only) for high table = 176 people (16 at high table.)

Please note: by placing the tables herringbone fashion (diagonally slanted) nobody ends up sitting with his or back fully to the high table, as would be the case for half of the people seated if the tables ran straight across the hall. (Tables running the length of the hall take up more space, and the outside tables cannot see the floor-show in the center aisle.)

Along the table edge allow 24 inches per person for sitting space. Hence an 8-foot table can seat four people to a side. Many commercial trestle tables are 30 inches by 8 feet in size, hence they will seat 8 (4 per side) plus 1 at each end if you wish. (Note: if wider tables are available, there will be more room for plates.

NOTE: some halls set a maximum number that can be seated to a meal, for fire safety reasons. However it is still best to draw up a scale floor-plan in advance to reduce confusion when setting up tables on the day.

City fire marshals set a maximum number of people per hall based on floor-area. In Adiantum it is:

• Seated at tables on movable chairs: 15 square feet per person.
• Seated at tables which have benches fixed to them: 10 sq.ft./person.
• For Seated at chairs (no tables), or standing: 7 sq. ft./person.

When you have found a hall with a suitable kitchen and room for the number of people you think will buy tickets (see further on in this article). find out:

1. the hall cost for one day and night, or from 8 a.m. to midnight (you will need it all day for cooking),
2. whether the hall has insurance requirements, and if so, what these will cost (some halls require that the group purchase insurance for the event),
3. whether you can hire just the kitchen portion for an extra day beforehand. Adiantum has been lucky enough this year to find a hall that will rent its kitchen and main halls separately for this year's Twelfth Night; we are hiring the hall plus a smaller room at $175 for one day, and the kitchen for $25 per day for two days. The extra financial cost is relatively small, and if you can do this it takes a great burden off the cooks on the day.

If you are unable to locate a cheap enough hall or feel that you cannot devise an attractive menu cheaply enough to be able to charge these rates, do not raise the ticket prices above what the market will bear; instead, cancel your feast plans, charge $1.00 or $2.00 (no more!) per head for hall rental costs, and have a potluck feast. Such a change in your plans should be done at an early stage in the planning, before any advertising is done for the event.

Note: "Fund-raising" dinners can command and get higher prices for tickets than other feasts; in recent years in An Tir $10.00 to $12.50 per ticket has been usual. However, these are annual events with a reputation for excellent food, and they are known to be that area's main fund-raiser of the year. People will not pay these prices for any other kind of event, (or even for a fund-raiser where the area's reputation is not established). Apply these ticket rates to any other kind of event at your direst peril!

For instance, at the 1977 An Tir Twelfth Night at Adiantum:

	No. of ($5.00) tickets sold by December 1	=	approx. 20
	No. sold by December 30	=	approx. 100
	No. sold by the night (January 13; we sold out)	=	approx. 205 (not including free passes)

Yet by December 1st we had the whole menu planned, knew we would sell all 200-odd tickets, and knew that we would not run at a loss; by December 30 we had purchased at least half of the food; and by January 6 we were already baking the least perishable items.

If you miscalculate the expected numbers, you can end up stuck with a huge bill for hall-hire and food, and insufficient ticket sales to cover it. Let me stress that if you just make a hopeful guess at the number of tickets you will sell, and this kind of financial disaster occurs, it will be nobody's fault but your own.

In any large area in the SCA (or in any other large volunteer organization) there will be people with experience who can give you advice. If you did a similar feast a year or two previously, you can use its figures as a starting point. If this is the first such event in your area however, it will be really difficult to estimate how many people you can expect. Its better to do a smaller event and sell out (which means all the more frustrated people who'll want to come to your next one).

So if you are new at the large feast business, do talk to people in other areas who have put on similar feasts, and ask them how many tickets they sold, and for what price. In adapting this to your own area, the following factors will modify the number of tickets you can be expected to sell (assuming that your price is reasonable):

1. Reputation counts! A group with a reputation for good feasts can expect to sell 2 or 3 times as many tickets as a group which has never put on a feast before or which has a reputation for having put on bad feasts in the past.

2. Geography. The size of the group in your area, and whether it is centrally placed among other groups or is totally out of the way, is important.

3. Type of event you are putting on. In the SCA, Principality Coronet and Kingdom Crown events attract a crowd regardless of where they are located. Thus a Principality Twelfth Night will be 1-1/2 times or even twice as large as a Midwinters Feast in the same area. An Tir Principality Twelfth Nights have been selling up to 200 $5.00 tickets in the last few years; Adiantum's Midwinters, not a Principality event, have been somewhat smaller (around 150 maximum, though some years we sold less because the hall size was limited), for the same ticket price.

4. Price you are charging (discussed in section (3), above.)

5. Publicity. People need TIME TO THINK (or at least to save the money) before they decide to shell out their hard-earned money for a paid-ticket event. If you get the publicity out so late that they hear about the event only 1 to 2 weeks beforehand, they will probably decide not to come. Give them at least 5 to 6 weeks warning for a paid-ticket feast, 4 weeks for a potluck, and preferably longer.

   An even worse situation occurred several years ago. A number of us from Adiantum were going to a weekend tourney to which we were taking ~ our usual hampers of picnic food. When we got there, we found that the autocrats had decided to put on a feast for which they charged donations (I think it was a minimum of $1 per head). They had bought several whole 10-pound cooked hams, large blocks of cheese, roasted several turkeys, and had pots of rice and salad (as I recall, several years later; this may be a little inaccurate.) Anyway, at the time I estimated that it had cost them at least $200 to buy, at the prices of that time.

   The advance publicity had merely said, "Group X will host a feast. " What does the word host mean? Potluck? Free food? Or what? All of us from Adiantum assumed that it meant potluck, and came prepared with lots of food but no money. People from other areas may have done likewise. In addition, there were only about 200 people at the tourney to eat all that expensive food. I heard later that the hosts lost money. If we had only been given more details in advance. Better not to have provided a feast at all than to have done it the way they did.

   So get your publicity out on time, make it exciting, and be specific, giving sufficient details. Inadequate publicity can be worse than none at all.

   With careful investigation of these factors, there is no reason why you should not be able to get a fairly accurate estimate of at least the minimum numbers you can expect. If you are still in doubt, aim for a smaller event at which you sell out.

UNDERestimating the number of tickets you will sell can occasionally also be a problem since the majority of sales will be during the last couple of weeks. Because of hall costs, we generally do not rent a hall larger than we need; however, if you do find a VERY large and very cheap hall, figure out the minimum number of tickets you will reasonably sell, but also put a maximum on it! The cooks have to plan food buying, advance cooking, number of helpers they will need, how many pots they will need to borrow (and whether they can obtain enough) well in advance (usually 2 or 3 months). If they are expecting to feed 120 people (and have been baking and freezing pie-crusts, and making deals with people to borrow pots, etc. for the last 2 months), and 3 days before the event you tell them you have sold 290 tickets, you are likely to get a cleaver through your head, or at best have all your cooks walk out. They can do some adjustment at the last minute, but not that much!

Happily, this situation is rare, as we generally have trouble finding large enough halls for the prices we can afford; but if this IS your situation, be considerate to your cooks.

Go to Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

© 1980 Janet Naylor

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Last updated 12/19/97.