How to Plan Food for Girl’s Camp {And Other Large Groups} – Menus, Tips, and Resources

Last year I was in charge of all the food for a large girl’s camp for church. We fed 260-270 people for nearly a week, and I made a deliberate effort to take lots and lots and lots of notes along the way in order to share everything with you!

I won’t be delving too much into budgets and cooking on a budget as that factor will vary widely between groups.

I also recognize that some people might be cooking out of coolers and over a campfire for all the meals while others have a gourmet kitchen and five refrigerators at their disposal. (VERY jealous of that last group 😉)

The information I’m sharing in this post is focused on:

• prep tips
• quantities
• suggested menus
• helpful resources
• food allergy workarounds
• etc

My hope is that this Information will be helpful and applicable no matter if you’re in the mountains at a church camp or on a beach for a family reunion.

MY TOP THREE TIPS FOR SUCCESS

Tip #1: Get Yourself a Committee That Will Go to the Ends of the Earth With You

A good committee is everything! I had six of the most amazing women on the committee with me, and they were so incredibly helpful.

I could not have done it without them, and if I ever manage to get myself into this situation again, it would come with the clear caveat that I would only do it if I had the same committee. (Also, if my budget could be increased by $2,000, that would be fantastico, k’thanks.)

Executing food for this size of group isn’t just a week-of kind of thing. We planned for months to make it happen. I think officially we held two actual in-person meetings to plan. Otherwise, we did most of our planning/strategizing via texts.

Several on my committee worked full-time and/or had major life events going on leading up to camp, so their main responsibilities were brainstorming, grocery shopping (extremely helpful! especially the few days leading up to camp), and hands-on help up at camp.

Others had more time available in the months leading up to camp and were instrumental in helping prep and freeze food.

The week of, everyone that could make it was all hands on deck. Every day of camp, we were up at 5:30 a.m. and on our feet until 9:30 p.m.

Honestly, it could not have run smoother for us up at camp. The fact that my committee was low-drama, high-working, and fun-loving was such a huge blessing.

Find yourself a committee you can plan with, laugh with, work with, and still love each other after it is all said and done!

Tip #2: A Note About Food Allergies

Yes, this step comes before any of the menu planning. As early as you can, work with those who are attending to figure out what food allergies you will need to work around.

For the meals or food items that weren’t gluten- or egg-free, we provided a gluten- and egg-free version – planning the menu after identifying food allergies helped us to streamline what meals to make.

For most of the baked goods, we also made a gluten-free version mostly just subbing in gluten-free flour 1:1 for the all-purpose flour.

The only exception was the homemade brownies. I used this brownie mix {aff. link} because it has such great reviews (and I can attest from snitching: DELICIOUS).

I also talked with parents and did research on how to make sure we didn’t cross-contaminate while prepping and cooking at camp.

Most of our egg-free girls could have gluten, so I made several batches of these egg-free cookies ahead of time (regular chocolate chip and double chocolate chip) for them.

For the few attendees that were gluten- and egg-free, I made the boxed brownies above using applesauce for the eggs and also had Heavenly Hunks {aff. link} available for snacks/treats as well as an EF/GF blondie bar.

Tip #3: Make Everything You Can Ahead of Time and Freeze It

Making food ahead of time was our committee’s superpower when feeding 260 people for girl’s camp.

After we met as a committee and set a menu, I put together a calendar from March until the first week of June, and I set a food priority for each week.

I texted my committee the week before and said “next week is pulled pork week” (or cookie week, etc). Anyone who could help cook/bake for that week texted back and we divided and conquered.

I, or one of my committee members, would go to the store on Monday and then farm out the ingredients to whoever could help.

I tackled all of the gluten-free and egg-free desserts and meal adaptations and reserved specific days for that where I wasn’t cooking or baking anything that could cross-contaminate.

We basically prepped and cooked everything ahead of time that would freeze well.

This meant that we had to transport A LOT of frozen food up to camp (it was about two hours away). The beauty of this is that we didn’t need coolers for all of it.

Because most of it was frozen in freezer bags, we piled them in layers in large totes and they stayed frozen on the way up to camp where we put them in the fridge and they thawed slowly there.

The other upside to prepping and freezing much of the food was that it meant we weren’t handling or prepping or cooking any raw meat while we were there.

(One of the main reasons we prepped so much ahead was because our camp kitchen didn’t have a working oven until the week before…and we knew it was a possibility the oven wouldn’t be working at all. In the end, it *kind* of worked, but we were glad to have cooked almost everything beforehand!)

We did have to find a lot of freezer space in the months leading up to camp.

We sent out a message to several church congregations and found a couple people who had a lot of space in their large chest freezers, and it was plenty to freeze everything that we prepped.

PREP AHEAD TIPS

• All of the meat was cooked ahead of time in large electric roasting pans (and a few slow cookers) {aff. links}.
• These liners for electric roasting pans and these liners for slow cookers were revolutionary – not only for the prep cooking but also up at camp for reheating. It saved HOURS on scrubbing out crusty roasting pans and crockpots {aff. links above}. UPDATE: recommending these with reservations based on a few recent comments (see comment thread below) – looks like maybe the manufacturing changed on these as some people have had issues with them melting.
• These 2-gallon freezer ziploc bags {aff. link} were so helpful with the vast quantity of food we were freezing. They helped minimize the number of bags we had to use and remember to transport.
• Cookies were all baked, cooled and frozen in gallon freezer ziplock bags and these containers {aff. link}
• Even the Swig sugar cookies were baked, frosted, sprinkled and frozen. They freeze and thaw great even frozen (and were the hit dessert at camp!).

THE MENU + PRINTABLES

Below was our menu for camp.

My goal was to have one FRESH item for dinner (in the end, this was one of the highlights for the girls, especially the caesar salad, cucumbers and watermelon) and one FROM-SCRATCH item for a home cooked feel.

I saved the menu above as a high resolution .pdf in photoshop and printed it as an engineering print at Staples (very inexpensive to get a large black and white print). We hung this up in the camp kitchen, as well as the day-by-day schedules, which I’ll share below.

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Below are details about each meal that we served up at the camp.
**For a printable/.pdf version of these details with larger font, click here**

(Keep scrolling because there is A LOT of additional info below these menu charts.)

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Snacks (served 1X a day in the afternoon)

We were tasked with providing a snack in the afternoon. In hindsight, I’m not sure the snack was necessary. The girls had a lot of food/snacks/junk at their own campsites, and we also had a lot of leftover cookies and items from meals that we would put out and the girls would snack on if they were hungry.

These were the snacks we had on hand to provide, but in the end, we used most of them for the grab-and-go breakfast on Friday morning.

• String cheese
• Granola bars
• Applesauce packets
• Cuties (oranges)
• Heavenly Hunks
• Leftovers

HOW TO FIGURE OUT QUANTITIES

I gave a lot of tips in the above tables about quantities, but here is a quick overview of how I calculated the quantities (and what I learned from having leftovers in a lot of areas!).

• Meat (for meat-centric meals): 1/3 pound meat (uncooked) per person for meat-centric meals (like sloppy joes, pulled pork sandwiches, etc)
• Meat for less-meat meals: 1/4 pound meat (uncooked) per person for less meat-centric meals (like spaghetti, Hawaiian Haystack gravy, etc)
• French Toast: two slices French toast per person; for the egg/milk mixture use 1 egg + 1/4 cup milk for every 2 slices bread.
• Watermelon: 50 servings for average to large size watermelon
• Rice: 1/4 to 1/3 cup DRY rice per person
• Pasta: 2 ounces pasta per person (for this easy pasta bake, we ended up needing even less than that – probably dependent on our particular group who had eaten a lot during the day so not ravenous at dinner, and we also had a lot of side dishes).
• Ice Cream: 18-20 servings per gallon of ice cream
• Root Beer (for root beer floats): 10-12 servings per liter of root beer

Let me know in the comments if you have any other specific quantity questions – or check up above in the tables for each meal. I included a lot of tips there!

ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT

Here is the equipment we couldn’t have lived without at girl’s camp.

• Electric roasters: we had eight of these at camp (had to scatter them around to different outlets if we were using all of them), but they were invaluable at heating and cooking food both prepping for camp and up at camp.
• Electric roaster liners: my entire committee agreed that these liners single-handedly saved us at camp. We used the electric roasters for nearly every meal. The fact that we didn’t have to several of them clean after each meal was a much-needed life (and back) saver.
• Handy chopper: one of my committee members brought this chopper to camp (I didn’t have one before, but I was converted after camp and promptly bought one). Even though we just had one, it was revolutionary for chopping strawberries and tomatoes, to name just a few things. I think the description states it doesn’t work for tomatoes, but it worked well for us using firm cherry tomatoes (and a firm hand!).
• Knife sharpener: we did a lot of other chopping too – cucumbers, lettuce, etc. Our knives did overtime duty and a knife sharpener was critical to keep them doing their best.
• Disposable aluminum pans: we used these full size pans for EVERYTHING. Heating, serving, prepping. We washed and re-used many of them over the course of the week, but we were all glad we had a huge stack to start with.
• Block ice: we used block ice to keep water cold during the day, and it lasted so much longer than cubed ice (and was easier to stack and store in the freezer).

DAY-BY-DAY CHARTS + SPREADSHEETS

My love for spreadsheets runs very deep. Some would say it is a bit…er…excessive. But spreadsheets and charts saved me during the planning and executing of cooking (and shopping!) for 270 people all week.

My actual spreadsheets won’t be super helpful to anyone else because they have such specific information for me and my committee, but I kept the following spreadsheets running:

• prep calendar for what to make when in the weeks leading up to camp
• master meal planning spreadsheet with each meal item listed and all the ingredients needed for each item and sub-item
• master shopping list separated by when to shop for it (many of the pantry staples we shopped for several weeks ahead of time vs the fresh ingredients we needed to get the day before or day of) and which committee member would tackle it
• budget spreadsheet that kept track of what we were spending, when we were spending it and what we were spending it on (in the end, we came in just a bit under budget – yay!)
• day-by-day girls camp plan spreadsheet – this was the most intense of all the spreadsheets as it detailed hour-by-hour up at camp what we needed to do to prep for each meal, how to serve foods and what to serve them in, and lots of other details.
  
  I turned this into large engineering prints (pictured below) that we hung on the back of the camp kitchen door to keep us all on track!
  
  And yes, I got a lot of good-natured grief from leaders/girls who stopped into the kitchen and saw my minute-by-minute outlines. 😂 I’m sure some thought it was over the top, but it kept us on track, and my committee all agreed it was helpful to see exactly what needed to be done.

Here is a .pdf version of my day-by-day plan for reference in case it might help to see the details I included (with personal identifying details removed). Unfortunately a customizable format isn’t easy/available to share as the files are enormous and the program is not user-friendly.

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Ooof! AND THAT’S A WRAP! That might be the longest post I’ve ever written here on this blog!

I thought I was exhausted after girl’s camp – but, man, I’m even more exhausted now reviewing and typing up all this information. 😂

No doubt, it is a ton of work to plan for and make meals for a large church camp (or whatever large group you are planning for), but with good helping hands, lots of planning, and a delicious menu, it is doable!

Use the comment section below to ask any questions and ESPECIALLY to comment with any experience you might have (favorite meals to make, tips, lessons learned). We learn the most when we share together!