About HowMuchPerPerson
Northwoods Ventures LLC · Updated October 7, 2026
HowMuchPerPerson answers the question every host asks before a party: how much do I actually need to buy? It's run by Northwoods Ventures LLC, a small independent publisher.
What we do
Most party food advice stops at “a third of a pound per person”. That still leaves you doing math in the store aisle. We take it the rest of the way, to the units the store sells: 3 whole briskets for 50 people, 14 packs of slider buns and 9 bags of ice for a graduation party of 75 outdoors. There's a calculator for each of 22 foods, 6 party menus, and a menu planner that turns a whole menu into one shopping list grouped by store aisle.
Where the numbers come from
Every amount on the site comes from one rules file of 42 foods, drinks and supplies, run through one formula: guests times the portion, adjusted for kids, appetite and serving style, plus a cushion, divided by the cooked yield and rounded up to store units. Each rule cites its sources (110 in all, led by the USDA Food Buying Guide and USDA food safety guidance), and the method page publishes every rule with them.
What we promise
- One method for every food, with no hand-typed answers.
- Answers in what you buy, with the range and the arithmetic shown.
- Honest estimates: party math depends on your crowd, so we show the range and let you adjust it.
- No accounts, and nothing you type is tied to you. See the privacy policy.
How the site is paid for
HowMuchPerPerson is free to use. We plan to pay for it with ads through Google AdSense; when they arrive, they'll never sit above an answer or appear on a printed list, and advertisers will have no say in the amounts we publish.
Who we are
HowMuchPerPerson is published by Northwoods Ventures LLC, which builds independent reference sites that turn public data into plain answers. Questions, corrections and press requests: support@howmuchperperson.com.
Other sites from Northwoods Ventures
Northwoods Ventures LLC also builds and runs these sites:
- TradeSalary — pay for the skilled trades by state and city, including what it's worth after the cost of living.
- UsedScore — which model years of a used car to avoid, based on federal complaint and recall records.
- DamageScore — send a photo of damage to your home and learn which trade you need, how serious it is, and what repairs typically cost.
- BillAverage — what electricity and natural gas cost in every state, and what heating oil costs across the Northeast.
- EnoughPizza — how many pizzas to order for a party or an office lunch.
- Baby Names of Ireland — what Irish baby names mean, how to say them, and where they come from.
- HTSLookup — every US tariff code in plain English, with the duty Customs collects on it today by country of origin.
- LakeLevelToday — today's water level for more than a thousand US lakes and reservoirs, straight from the agencies that measure them.
- PropertyRoofs — how commercial roof systems compare for building owners, from how each goes on and handles hail to what public owners have paid.
- FactoryDate — how old a water heater, furnace, AC or heat pump is, decoded from the serial number on its data plate.
- AgeByName — how old the typical person with any first name is, from Social Security baby-name records.
See the full Northwoods Ventures portfolio.