Drinks for a corporate event or D&D: ordering for 100 to 500 pax

A dinner and dance, a town hall, a family day, a product launch: the drinks order is the easiest part to get right and the most visible part to get wrong. Nobody remembers that the water arrived; everybody remembers when it ran out. This guide is the arithmetic, the timing and the logistics for an order of a hundred guests and up.

Count the drinks

The same rule as for a party of fifty, at scale: two drinks a guest in the first hour, one a guest for each hour after, a quarter more outdoors. So:

Guests	3 hours	4 hours	5 hours
100	400	500	600
200	800	1,000	1,200
300	1,200	1,500	1,800
500	2,000	2,500	3,000

Divide by 24 for cartons and round up. Two hundred guests over four hours is 1,000 drinks: just over forty cartons. The 50 pax guide has a calculator that does this for any number, including the split between cans, water and packet drinks.

Mix for a seated event

A seated dinner drinks differently from a standing reception. Put a 1.5L bottle of water on every table before the guests sit down, on top of the count above; it is the drink people take without asking and it halves the number of cans opened and abandoned. Then, from the count: roughly half cans of soft drink, a third water, and the rest something lighter, an isotonic drink or a packet tea. For a family day outdoors, make it half water.

Bars serving mixers order the mixers separately; they go faster than any rule of thumb predicts. A juice or two on the table suits a family day better than a third soft drink.

Order a week ahead

We deliver within 3–5 working days. Order a week before the event and there is slack for the venue. If the venue takes deliveries only on the day, pick that day's slot in your basket; the slots run further out than the promise for exactly this reason.

Cans and packets keep for months unopened and out of the sun, so an early delivery costs nothing and a late one costs the event.

Deliver to the venue

Our own vans go anywhere in Singapore, to a loading bay or a service entrance. In your basket, before you check out, Delivery Notes take:

• the venue and the hall or room, and the loading-bay procedure;
• the name and number of the person receiving on the day, not the person ordering;
• the receiving hours the venue allows.

For Sentosa, our driver calls before entering the island. For a hotel, ask the banquet office where deliveries go and whether they will hold the cartons chilled.

The deposit on a thousand cans

Every can and plastic bottle carries the container deposit of S$0.10, on its own line with no GST. A thousand cans is a thousand deposits, and every one of them comes back per container at a return point. Ask the venue to keep the empties in a bin rather than crushing them; a reverse vending machine takes them uncrushed with the barcode readable. For a company event it is worth assigning the job to someone.

The deposit does not count towards free delivery. An events order clears the free-delivery line (S$65 of drinks) many times over anyway.

Invoicing

If the company needs a GST invoice, order on a business account: the invoice carries your UEN, and the deposit is listed apart from the drinks. The price is the same as for any shopper; the discount is by spend and the basket shows it as the cartons go in.

Where to order

Soft drinks by the carton, water, big bottles for the tables, packet drinks and isotonic and energy drinks.

Cartons people start with

• Coke Zero, 24 cans of 320ml
• Sprite, 24 cans of 320ml
• 100 Plus, 24 cans of 325ml
• Elements water, 12 bottles of 1.5L for the tables
• Schweppes tonic water, 24 cans of 320ml

More collections for this guide

• 100Plus
• 12-bottle cartons