Bonfire Night Catering: Feeding a Crowd Outdoors in November

Bonfire night is the hardest catering of the year

Not the biggest and not the most formal, the hardest. Everything about the fifth of November works against a caterer. It is dark by five. It is usually wet. There is rarely a kitchen, often no power, and the whole crowd wants to eat inside about forty minutes of each other, standing up, in coats, holding a drink in one hand and quite possibly a child in the other.

We have catered enough of them to have opinions. Here is what genuinely works, what it costs, and the handful of things worth sorting before you book anybody.

Hot food, or don’t bother

A sandwich buffet is a fine thing in an office at midday. Outdoors in November it is a mistake. Cold food gets colder, nobody wants it, and half of it goes back on the van.

What people want at a bonfire is something hot they can hold. That narrows it usefully:

• A hog roast. Pork, crackling, stuffing and apple sauce in a bread cob. It is the traditional answer because it is the right one: it holds heat, it serves fast, and one hog does the work of a kitchen you do not have.
• A barbecue. Burgers, sausages and hot dogs, cooked as people come. Better for a younger crowd and for anyone who wants a choice.
• Both, if the numbers justify it. Above about a hundred and fifty, one serving point becomes a queue nobody enjoys standing in.

Everything else. The grazing boards, the finger buffets, the beautiful platters that photograph so well in July: belongs indoors.

What a hog roast costs for a bonfire

Hog roasts are priced by guest numbers rather than per head, because a hog costs what it costs whether forty people eat it or fifty. Our bands start at £795 for the Bronze package up to fifty guests, and run to £2,490 for Gold at a hundred and fifty to two hundred. Every figure is published on the hog roast and BBQ menu.

Bronze is the hog, crackling, stuffing, bread rolls and the sauces. Silver adds coleslaw and baby roasts. Gold adds butchers’ sausages, which at a bonfire is worth more than it sounds: sausages feed the children who will not eat pork in a cob.

If a hog is more than the evening needs, a barbecue is £13.00 a head for The Standard, with a kids option at £8.00. Minimum fifty for the barbecue; the hog roast has no minimum beyond the smallest band.

All prices exclude VAT.

Four things to sort before you book anyone

Where the roast goes, and what is underneath it. We need a flat area of about three metres by five, and a route to it that does not involve carrying equipment up steps or across a hundred yards of wet grass. Gravel, tarmac or a firm path is ideal. A waterlogged field in November is not, and it is better to discover that in September.

How far the food is from the fire. Further than you think. People drift towards warmth, and a serving point too close to the bonfire ends up with a queue standing in smoke. Twenty metres upwind is about right.

Lighting. It is dark by five and a serving table nobody can see is a serving table nobody uses. Whoever is providing the bonfire usually has an answer to this; ask them before the day rather than on it.

When you actually want to serve. This is the one people get wrong. Fireworks pull everybody’s attention for fifteen minutes, and food served during them goes cold on the table. Either serve well before, or wait until they finish and serve into the lull afterwards. Tell us which and we will time the roast to it.

The weather question

It will rain. We work under a gazebo we bring with us, so the cooking and the carving are not the problem.

Your guests are. A hog roast will go ahead in almost anything, but people will not queue in horizontal rain for long, and an evening with nowhere dry for them to stand becomes a short evening. If you have a barn, a marquee, a clubhouse or even a large open-sided tent, the whole thing works better. If you have none of those, serve earlier rather than later.

Book earlier than feels necessary

Bonfire night is one date. Every organised display in the county wants catering on the same evening, and there are only so many machines and so many teams.

November the fifth falls on a Thursday in 2026, which usually means displays spread across that weekend as well, so the pressure sits on three or four dates rather than one. If you are organising anything for a club, a school or a village, ask in September. By late October the honest answer to most enquiries is no.

And then it is Christmas

The fortnight after bonfire night is when December bookings firm up, so if you are planning both it is worth having the same conversation once. Our Christmas catering runs from the 1st to the 23rd of December, festive buffets from £8.75 a head.

For a bonfire, though: hot food, somewhere flat to set up, lights, and a decision about fireworks. Get those four right and the rest is straightforward.

Planning something for the fifth? Tell us the numbers, the site and the timings and we will price it properly: get a quote or call the office on 0115 647 6903.