Help pricing a whole hog party.

We charge between $18-$21 for whole hog and 2 sides depending on the head count. For 100 people I'd be around $20. Too much work to charge less. I tell them if that's too much I can cook shoulders much cheaper. Maybe that's why we only do about 2-4 per year LOL

I pay around $1.89 per pound for pigs and get 120-130 pounder for 100 people. I charge $1,000 for a cooked pig and sauce, nothing else. Something like $250 for the pig my cost. If you are paying $3.00lb I would charge $1200. Not to mention your cost in gasoline, wood, charcoal and the 15 hours of work you will be doing. Multiply by four. This is just for a pig and no other meats or sides.

If they request it cooked a certain way I would do it. They are the customer after all. I will post some pics of different ways I cook them if you want.

Just my two cents.

Here's one of ours. The presentation is better flipped over but I love cooking them upside down. Just works for me.

There are a lot of labor costs associated with a whole pig because it is a large piece of meat that needs to be cooked perfectly to get rave reviews. These include, getting the pig, Prepping the pig, transportation, cooking, presentation, serving, clean-up, and travel back. The charges others listed above are not unreasonable for the amount of time it takes start to finish.

The customer will always whine it is too high of a price, but if it were so easy, everyone would be roasting their own pigs. For customers that complain about the price of a whole pig for 100 people and insist they want a presentation pig, I offer a much smaller pig for presentation and pork shoulders/butts for supplemental meat.

Unfortunately you cannot choose for the customer and expect them to be happy, they have to choose what they want and how they want it or you will be the bad guy. You can gently make suggestions with explanations, but no matter what they want - the customer is always right... and no matter what happens or goes wrong you will always be to blame.