Dinner for 200

I was in charge of dinner for our ward Christmas party & need to record my notes on feeding dinner to 200 people in case I ever have to do it again.. Or in case this could be useful to someone else at some point.

The menu:
Roast beef
Mashed potatoes & gravy
Green beans
Salad
Rolls
Jello
Cookies & punch

My notes:
Roast beef:  We ordered 4 cases (20lbs each) of precooked roast beef, figuring 1/3 lb of meat per person.  This amount was good.  We did have one foil pan of meat left, but I felt like we got this amount right.  The meat came frozen & we took it out and let it thaw the night before, put it in roaster pans (3 roasts per pan) & let it heat for 2 1/2 - 3 hours, sliced it with an electric knife & served in foil pans.

Mashed potatoes:  bought 3 cases of premade mashed potatoes, spread them in foil pans covered with foil & heated in the oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours & served them from the pans.  We had 1 pan left over.

Gravy:  bought 2 containers of brown gravy mix from Costco.  Each had 99 servings.  I only ended up making 1, but should have done both.  We came close to running out, but I mixed some of it with the juice from the roast beef so it would go farther.  This worked fine and there was enough.

Green beans:  bought bags of organic frozen green beans from Costco.  According to the package, each bag contained 25 servings.  I bought 7 bags.  We would have been fine with 5 or 6.  We boiled them and served them from foil pans.

Rolls:  ordered from the lion house.  18 dozen & we had a few dozen left over.  I would stick to this amount.

Salad:  the salad was made with spring greens, sliced pears, gorgonzola cheese, toasted pecans & a homemade vinegarette.  We plated & served the salads.  For 200 salads, we used nine 1 lb boxes of spring greens from Costco, 3 dozen pears ( they were big, so we only used 2 dozen), 2 lbs of pecans, toasted in the oven, and two 1.5 lb containers of crumbled Gorgonzola cheese.  The dressing was as follows:
4 cups real maple syrup
2 cups vegetable oil
2 cups fresh lime juice(yes, I squeezed them by hand)
1 T + 1 t salt
1 T + 1 t pepper
Blend together.  This was plenty of dressing & we didn't use it all.  Just dress the salad right before serving.

Jello:  we assigned 10 people to bring their favorite jello.  This was enough & was mildly entertaining to see the jello creations.

Cookies:  assigned 12 people to bring 2 dozen cookies.  This was enough without having tons of excess cookies.  Wished there were more homemade cookies, but greatful that people were willing to help.

Punch:  2 parts cranapple juice mixed with 1 part sprite.  I bought 12 64 oz bottles of cranapple and 6 bottles of sprite + ice.  We were able to dump it directly int the drink dispensers, add ice & serve.  This amount was good.  We bought 8 bags of ice, which was also about right.  We also served water.  We had 2 drink dispensers with punch & 3 with water.