Two to three pieces per person
That range covers almost every morning meeting we deliver to in the GTA. Where you land inside it depends on one thing: whether breakfast is the reason people came.
- Two pieces when food runs alongside a working agenda. People eat while someone presents, and half the room takes one thing.
- Three pieces when the morning is the event — a team breakfast, a client visit, a session that starts before 9am when nobody has eaten yet.
Order to headcount, not to the number who confirmed. Morning attendance is the least reliable slot in the calendar, and a breakfast table that runs out at 9:15 is remembered longer than one with a few pieces left over.
| Headcount | Working meeting | Breakfast is the event | Varieties to spread across |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 people | 20 pieces | 30 pieces | 2–3 |
| 20 people | 40 pieces | 60 pieces | 3–4 |
| 30 people | 60 pieces | 90 pieces | 4–5 |
| 50 people | 100 pieces | 150 pieces | 5–6 |
Most items carry a minimum of 10 pieces, and salads 15, which matters more than it sounds: it is the reason a 10-person order works best across two or three varieties rather than six. Spreading a small order too thin means ordering more than you need.
The sweet and savoury balance
This is the decision that actually determines whether a breakfast table empties evenly, and it is the one most orders get wrong. An all-pastry table looks generous at 8am and looks like dessert by 9:30.
A workable ratio for a mixed office is roughly two-thirds sweet to one-third savoury. Our breakfast catering menu splits along the same line:
- Croissants — butter, almond, chocolate, matcha, everything bagel, and ham & cheese. The ham and cheese and the everything bagel are the two that carry the savoury end of a croissant-only order.
- Savoury pastries — quiche bites, spinach and feta tartlets, caprese skewers, bruschetta crostini, deviled eggs. These are what stop the table reading as breakfast dessert.
- Salads — worth adding once you are past about 10:30, and the point at which an order is really brunch.
If the room has dietary restrictions
Say so in the quote request rather than on the day. It is the difference between a menu planned around a restriction and items pulled off a tray in front of the person they were pulled for. Nut-free, vegetarian, and halal options exist across much of the menu, and every item on a styled table carries a card naming what it contains.
Breakfast, or actually brunch?
If your event starts after 10:30, order it as brunch even when the invitation says breakfast. The menu is the same; the weighting is not. Brunch carries fewer plain croissants, more savoury, and salads — because it is replacing a meal rather than preceding one.
The practical test: will people eat lunch afterwards? If not, you are catering a meal, and two pieces per person will not do it.
Notice, delivery, and the timing that actually matters
Three to five business days is usually enough for a tray delivery. The more useful thing to get right is not the lead time but the delivery instruction: tell us when the meeting starts, not when you want the food to arrive. We work backwards from the start, which absorbs the elevator wait, the security desk, and the ten minutes of setting out that nobody accounts for.
For downtown Toronto towers, add the loading dock and service-elevator window — booked with building management ahead of the day rather than negotiated on arrival.
Ordering the same thing every month
Once a breakfast order repeats, the useful change is not the menu but the arrangement. Recurring schedules hold the delivery slot so lead time stops being a question each month, and net-30 invoicing runs through corporate catering once an account is set up.
If your orders split between team mornings and client-facing events, the two want different formats — that split is worth reading about separately before you standardise on one.
The short version
Two to three pieces per person, weighted two-thirds sweet to one-third savoury, spread across fewer varieties than you think if the order is small. Give us the meeting start time. Order to headcount. Everything else is easier to change than the quantity.
