Office jobs are where this question gets asked, and the answer has moved. A buffet line used to be the default for a department lunch. Individual portions are now often what the client asks for, and the arithmetic is closer than people assume.
Cost per head, properly
A Self-Heating Bento Set · 1000ml is one person, one box. It runs $2.00 each from 20 pieces, dropping to $1.90 from 400 and $1.70 from 2000. So forty people is forty boxes at $2.00 — eighty dollars of equipment.
The same forty people on a buffet line with four dishes needs about seven trays, which at $7.90 each from 4 pieces is a little over fifty dollars. The buffet wins on equipment cost, and keeps winning as headcount rises, because trays scale with dishes while boxes scale with people.
| Pax | Bento (one each) | Buffet trays |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | $40.00 | $31.60 |
| 40 | $80.00 | $55.30 |
| 80 | $160.00 | $92.40 |
| 150 | $300.00 | $177.10 |
That table is equipment only, which is exactly how it misleads people. Bento boxes come portioned, so you've done the portioning in your kitchen where it's quick, rather than on site with tongs. A buffet line needs serving utensils, a table long enough for it, and usually someone standing there.
The logistics decide it more often than cost
- No table? Bento. Plenty of offices can't give you four metres of surface, and a buffet without a table isn't a buffet.
- Staggered lunch hours? Bento. A buffet line that opens at noon is cold and picked over by one, and people drifting in from meetings get the end of it.
- Hot-desking across floors? Bento, and label them. A buffet on level 12 does nothing for the team on 14.
- One room, one sitting, everyone eats together? Buffet. It's cheaper, it looks more generous, and that matters for a client lunch.
Ask who's eating, not just how many. A forty-head buffet for a team that eats at their desks in ones and twos is the wrong format at any price.
Dietary requirements
This is where bento quietly wins and nobody mentions it in the quote. Three vegetarians in forty is trivial with boxes — three different boxes, labelled. On a buffet line it's a separate tray of something, which is another tray and another dish to cook, and you're still relying on people reading a card.
When bento is the wrong call
Don't do boxes for a big celebratory lunch. A hundred and fifty identical boxes on a trestle table reads as a canteen, and the client who asked for a spread will notice they didn't get one. The format carries a message and at some headcounts the message is the point.
And don't do boxes for food that doesn't portion. Anything with a sauce that needs ladling, anything carved, anything where the serving is part of the show — those want a line and a person behind it.
Bento has a minimum of 20 pieces, so small jobs aren't the format either. Above 4000 pieces we quote by hand, because at that size we can usually do better than the tier.