How Much Pick and Mix Do You Need Per Person?

The two ways people get this wrong are buying a kilo for eight children and buying five kilos for a wedding of forty. Here are the numbers we give people over the phone.

The working amounts

• Children’s party bags: 60–80g per child. That is five or six pieces plus a lolly.
• Adult help-yourself table: 100–150g per head, if there is other food.
• Wedding sweet table: 100g per guest is generous. People take less from a sweet table than you expect, especially after a meal.
• Office bowl: about 500g per ten people per week.

How many sweets is a kilo?

It depends entirely on what you pick, which is why weight alone is a poor guide. Roughly, 100g gives you:

• 12–18 pieces of dense sweets — chews, toffees, fudge, jellies
• 20–30 pieces of small hard sweets — bonbons, pips, mints
• 6–10 pieces of anything aerated — marshmallows, foam bananas, flumps

Every product page on this site gives an approximate piece count for the exact bag size you are looking at, worked out from the individual piece weight. That is a more reliable planning number than a general rule.

Buy a mix of textures

A practical point rather than a sales one: a bag of nothing but marshmallows looks enormous and runs out immediately, and a bag of nothing but toffee is hard work. Two thirds chewy and jelly sweets, one third hard sweets and lollies is a mix that lasts and suits most people.

Ordering ahead

Sweets keep for months sealed, so there is no advantage in leaving it late and a real risk in doing so. Order the week before. If you want the same mix made up several times over — for identical party bags, for instance — email sa***@********ts.com rather than building it repeatedly in the pick and mix builder; we will weigh them out for you.

Allergies

If children are involved, ask parents beforehand. A mixed bag cannot be guaranteed free from traces of anything, because the sweets sit against each other and we pack by hand in a shared area. Individually wrapped sweets are the safer format for a party — the wrapper keeps each sweet with its own labelling.

Worked examples

Three real orders, so you can find the one closest to yours.

• A 7-year-old’s party, 18 children. 18 × 70g = about 1.3kg. Round to 1.5kg and you have spare for the ones who lose theirs.
• A wedding sweet table, 90 guests. 90 × 100g = 9kg. In practice 6–7kg is usually enough for an evening reception, because the table sits alongside a buffet and people take less than you expect. Buy in 3kg bags for the best unit price.
• An office of 25, a bowl kept topped up. Roughly 1.2kg a week. Individually wrapped keeps far better in an open bowl.

What runs out first

Consistently: chocolate, anything fizzy, and cola bottles. Consistently left behind: aniseed, hard mints, and coconut. If you are building a mix for a mixed-age crowd, weight it towards fruit chews and jellies and treat the traditional end as a smaller supporting share rather than half the bag.

Bags, jars and scoops

If you are decanting into jars, a 1-litre sweet jar holds roughly 700–900g of most jellies and chews, and noticeably less of anything aerated. Two 3kg bags fill about seven standard jars. Give people a scoop rather than tongs — it is faster, and it stops the queue.

Ordering for a fixed date

Order a week ahead. Sweets keep for months sealed, so there is no freshness argument for leaving it late and a real delivery risk in doing so. For anything that cannot slip — a wedding, a fair with a fixed date — order two weeks out and email sa***@********ts.com so we know it is date-critical.

Adjusting for who is actually eating

A single number per head is a starting point, not an answer. The things that move it:

• Age. Under-tens eat less than you expect and take more than you expect —
  the bag goes home half full. Teenagers are the opposite. Adults at an evening event graze.
• Is there other food? Sweets alongside a buffet get picked at. Sweets as the
  only thing on the table get eaten.
• Is it a take-home or a help-yourself? A sealed bag per guest is predictable. An
  open table is not, and you should budget 30–50% more.
• Time of day. An afternoon children’s party clears a sweet table. A wedding
  evening reception barely touches one until after eleven.

Weight, not pieces

Every rule of thumb based on piece count falls apart as soon as you change the sweet. A hundred
grams is about six large gummy shapes, or roughly thirty small fizzy pieces, or two handfuls of
marshmallows which will half-fill a cone on their own because they are mostly air.

Work in grams, and use the price per 100g shown on every listing to compare
lines rather than comparing bag prices. It is the single most useful number on the page and almost
no sweet shop publishes it.

Mixing a table that looks generous

The trick is not more weight, it is more variety at the same weight. Four lines at 250g each
looks considerably more abundant than one line at a kilo, and costs the same. Build from three
groups: something bulky to fill volume, something colourful to catch the eye, something small to
fill the gaps.

Height helps as much as quantity — jars and stands at different levels read as more than a
flat tray holding the same amount.

What to buy, and when

For anything over a couple of kilos, bulk and trade is materially
cheaper than retail bags of the same lines. If you want to choose every line yourself rather than
take an assortment, build your own pick and mix.

On timing: wrapped and dry unwrapped sweets can be bagged two to three weeks ahead if sealed and
kept cool. Unwrapped fizzy and sour sweets should be done the day before at the earliest, because
the acid coating draws in moisture. Full detail in
what to put in sweet cones.