Taco Bar Fundraiser

So my youth group is doing a dinner fundraiser this evening. They decided on a taco bar and at this moment I think everything is going to go smoothly. This is the second large meal I have put on at our church and it's a little nerve-wracking. Especially when four or so is the most you generally have ever cooked for. Luckily, with our last pasta dinner I had a parent who had typed up very specific instructions on how to pull it off which helped a lot.

So, I first started out trying to solicit food donations from Kroger and Earthfare who have donated to our youth group events in the past. Kroger now requires your request 45 days in advance and Earthfare sends their requests to their corporate office, so both were a no-go. I used wejoinin to make a sign up sheet for parents/guardians to bring food items. That worked fairly well and took some of the pressure off me and the youth group's finances.

Thank goodness for Yahoo Answers, which helped me get an idea of how much meat I needed per taco. We're estimating 50-75 people. I headed to Sam's and bought about 13.5 lbs of ground chuck, a big bottle of salsa, 5 lbs of shredded cheddar, a tub o' sour cream, a ten pound bag of pinto beans and a tub of lemonade mix. Kroger had roma tomatoes cheaper by the lb than any at Sams (99c for romas). I also got some fajita seasoning (spices half off at Kroger), cake mixes and icing for dessert, a few hard shelled tacos to complement what others were bringing (40 flour tortillas and 20-25 hard shell taco shells).
A couple days ago I found boxes of tostada shells on sale at the Asheville Hwy Kroger...79c for 10 so refried bean tostadas are going to be the vegetarian option. With tacos and their toppings we didn't figure a side dish was really necessary. I hope we are right.

My boss offered kindly to bake the cupcakes we'll be selling for $1 to decorate which is nice because with my car issues continuing I would not have gotten that finished. Total right now spent on ingredients out of our Boston Fund is 116.79. We're just charging the same prices usually charged at Fellowship Meals which is Adults $5. Children $3 with a max of $13 per family. Hope we at least break even and aren't eating nachos for the next week. 

Update: We probably had more than 100 people show up! We ran out of food at the end and I was so worried we'd have tons of leftovers. Beans took longer than I expected to cook but they were good. In the end we made $252!