Chocolate quantity planner
How much chocolate for a party, a wedding, a fountain, a hot chocolate bar, a tasting or a set of gift boxes — with the reasoning behind every figure shown beside it.
50 guests, standard appetite
- Chocolate in total: 2.0 kg
- 40g per guest, which assumes chocolate is one item among several rather than the only thing on the table.
- As individual chocolates: about 182 pieces
- A moulded bonbon or truffle is typically 10 to 12 grams.
- As bars to break up: 20 × 100g bars
- The most economical format by a wide margin, and the least ceremonial.
Practical points
- If chocolate is the ONLY dessert rather than one of several, use the generous setting — the per-guest figures here assume competition from other food.
- Put chocolate out late. It softens, blooms and picks up smells, and a bowl that has sat through a whole evening in a warm room looks tired regardless of what it cost.
What this had to assume
- These are planning conventions rather than measurements. They come from catering practice and from this catalogue's own serving sizes, and they are stated as a starting point you should adjust for what you know about your event.
- Nobody can predict what a particular group will eat. The single most reliable correction is your own memory of the last comparable occasion.
- Appetite is set to standard, which multiplies the per-person figures by 1. That single dial is doing more work than any other input here.
What this cannot tell you
- Every figure is a PLANNING CONVENTION drawn from catering practice, not a measurement and not a prediction. Nobody can know what a particular group will eat.
- Per-person conventions are unreliable below about six people, because one enthusiastic guest moves the average a long way. The tool says so rather than returning a confident small number.
- The fountain tiers are a band rather than a specification. Working charges vary by machine and the manufacturer's figure is the one to use.
- It does not know your other food. The party figures assume chocolate is one item among several; if it is the only dessert, the generous setting is the honest one.
- It cannot account for weather, which ruins more event chocolate than under-ordering does. The wedding mode warns about it and cannot solve it.
- The appetite dial moves the results by a factor of two between its extremes, which is more than any other input. Treat the output as a range rather than a number.
Why the fountain answer is different from every other one you will find
Search for how much chocolate a fountain needs and you will get a figure per guest. That model is wrong twice. A fountain has a working charge — a quantity that has to sit in the basin for the auger to lift chocolate to the top of the tower at all — and that charge is a property of the machine rather than of your guest list. Under-fill it and the curtain breaks into a dribble.
And a fountain does not consume its chocolate. It circulates it. What actually leaves is the coating carried away on dipped items, which is a fraction of what went in — most of the charge is still in the basin at the end of the evening. So the answer is charge plus carry-away, and for any ordinary domestic event the charge is the larger half.
Every number here is a convention
These figures come from catering practice and from this site’s own serving sizes — the drink doses, the tasting portions. They are a starting point, not a measurement, and the appetite setting moves them further than any other input. Your memory of the last comparable event is better evidence than anything on this page.