FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2024
Tips for Hosting a Potluck Party
Food & Beverage
Casual Hosting
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Details, delegate, & dish it up
How to plan a potluck you’ll enjoy
What’s better than getting together with your friends and having a grand time with quality eats? Hot take: A potluck. We support all your cooking efforts and maximizing on TikTok recipe finds, but also do what we can to make planning gatherings easier anywhere we can. Because when it comes to hosting, we are all about ease. So pick your food theme, make a list, invite your friends, and delegate out the dishes.
Food Delegation Chart
Sign up form: Potluck Tasks
Membership has its party privileges! Discover your perks & start saving today.
what to bring to a potluck
Steps for planning a potluck
1. Pick the theme
Execute a potluck and make it look effortless when you choose a food genre in advance. This guides your dish choices, as well as adds a level of organization and order (in the best way) to your party.
A few themes to get you inspired:
Greek night: The limit to toppings does not exist, IMO.
Taco Tuesday
Italian dinner
Game day: Yes to dipping all things in nacho cheese. It’s my cheese, nacho cheese.
DIY Pizza
Put it on a stick: Think skewers or tooth picks: satay chicken, fruit kebabs, caprese skewers, etc.
Psst… we have you completely covered for a few of those, don’t miss our theme-specific tips for pizza & tacos below;)
How to batch prep taco meat
Dress up your drinks, fiesta style!
2. Identify what you’re responsible for as the host
Pick out the dish(es) that you know you want to provide to set the foundation for the meal. If there’s a main course, consider taking on the main meat or protein, pasta noodles, or pizza crust. This way if you know you want a certain flavor or seasoning to find its way into every meal, you get to make that happen.
3. Decide what you can assign out for friends to bring
Drinks: Wine, cocktails, mocktails
Ice
Apps
Side dishes
Salads: Be it pasta, green, house, caesar, spring mix, fruit, the options abound.
Desserts
4. Make your guest list
Don’t overthink this one—in fact, maybe you have your potluck-ready crew set in your mind. Think about which of your friends would be a great mix to add in shared dishes and be reliable to bring what they are assigned. And excited about it too, of course. We love a cheerful cook contributor.
See how to make a guest list.
5. Invite, plan, and coordinate what to bring
Pick your potluck party date
Invite your guests, including that potluck dish assignments will be coming upon RSVP!
Include RSVP date—so you can split dish assignments by said date
Send out Food Delegation Chart (below)
Set date for guests to sign up
Follow up with guests who lag and remind them the potluck is coming and they’re a key contributor!
Pro Tip: Copy and save this Food Delegation Chart and customize as you need!
how to plan a potluck party
6. Communicate dietary restrictions
Since food sensitivities are common and vital to adhere to, be sure to set some guidelines for your guests bringing food (which ideally is everyone, in a potluck setting). Allergy notes are included in the Food Delegation Chart, so point those out to your guests.
7. Delegate other tasks & supplies
If you have the place settings that you’ve been craving getting out for guests, no time like the potluck present! If you’d rather save the dishwashing and have your guests contribute to the supplying, make note of that as well.
Sign up form: Potluck Tasks
Pro Tip: Check out our Favorite Biodegradable Options
tips for a potluck
8. Set-up & clean-up
Are you Host McClean yourself, or do you prefer to have your guests join in on this with you? This one isn’t imperative, since you can typically hope guests will organically assist with the clean-up post eating. Still, if you foresee a lot of set-up for a certain theme, some guests would prefer to offer their services rather than cooking and food prep time. So set-up and clean-up is a great replacement for food.
Potluck: The ultimate group bonding experience. Since gathering friends together is all about connection, we love how a potluck automatically weaves this into an atmosphere. Guests get to share what their secret tip was for making the best appetizer dip ever, how they got the supreme crunch in their salad, or what family tradition they used to make theirs happen. Potlucks are here to stay, and we’re happy with that.
Posted 11:26 AM