Brooklyn Catering Tray Prices: The Full FreeTown Price List

What Brooklyn catering trays cost at FreeTown African & American Cuisine

A full pan of catering food from FreeTown African & American Cuisine costs between $40 and $165, depending on what is in it. White rice is the least expensive tray at $40. Pan Lamb and Lamb Suya are the most expensive, at $165 each. Every price on this list is for a full pan, the standard party-tray size caterers use to feed a group, not a per-plate or per-person charge.

That range is the quotable answer, but the more useful thing this page does is publish the whole list. A lot of catering shopping in Brooklyn means filling out a form and waiting for a callback before you know whether the food is even in your budget. This page skips that. Every tray below has a real, current price attached to it, so you can plan a menu before you ever pick up the phone.

Why catering gets priced by the full pan

FreeTown African & American Cuisine, at 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights, prices its catering menu by the full pan, not by the plate. This is standard practice for tray catering. A full pan is a fixed quantity of food, so the price stays the same regardless of exactly how many people show up to eat it. You are buying a tray of Jollof Rice or a tray of Fried Chicken, not a headcount.

The advantage of full-pan pricing is that it is simple to combine. A spread for a family gathering, a repast, or a graduation party is usually built from a handful of pans across a few categories: a rice, a protein or two, a couple of sides. Nothing gets multiplied out by the number of people coming. Because every tray on this list has a set price, you can add up a spread on paper before calling in the order.

It also makes changing your mind cheap. Swap one protein for another and the difference is a single subtraction. Add a rice tray and you know the new total before you dial. If the mechanic itself is new to you, what priced by the pan means takes it apart in more detail, and the difference between per-person and per-tray catering pricing explains why the two models are hard to compare directly.

The complete tray price list

These are the published catering tray prices. Every one is per full pan. Every one is a planning figure, not a quote. All of them are subject to change, so call 718-799-7160 to confirm the current number before you order.

Poultry and meat

Seafood

Rice and pasta

Sides and salads

That is 18 trays across four sections, running from a $40 pan of white rice to a $165 pan of lamb.

A few things fall out of the list once it is all in one place. The two chicken trays cost the same $100, so ordering one fried and one baked covers both preferences at no premium. The cheapest and the most expensive trays are separated by a factor of four, which means the same number of pans can produce two very different totals. And the sides section tops out at $90, so the greens, the potatoes and the salad are rarely what moves a budget. The proteins are.

How to build a spread from these trays

Most catering orders combine trays across sections. Very few are one large tray of a single dish. A common shape is one rice tray, one or two proteins, and a side or two, mixed to match the crowd and the occasion. Pan Jollof Rice pairs naturally with Pan Fried Chicken and Pan Collard Greens for a West African and soul food spread on one table, which is the kind of order this kitchen is built for. West African and soul food on the same table covers why that combination works and why it is hard to buy elsewhere in central Brooklyn.

If you're catering a church function, a church function and family reunion spread often runs a rice, two proteins, and a side or two, and that page walks through the logistics of coordinating one order instead of a sign-up sheet. If this is a one-off party rather than a recurring event, how tray catering works for a Brooklyn party starts from the beginning.

There is no fixed formula for how many pans a given guest count needs. That is deliberate, and it is the subject of the next section.

So how many pans does your guest count need?

Here is the honest limit of a page like this one. We can't tell you.

How far a given pan goes depends on what else is on the table, how big the appetites are, and whether it's the only protein or one of three. A pan of collard greens next to two proteins and a rice goes further than the same pan on its own. Nobody can give you an accurate number without knowing the rest of your spread, so there isn't going to be an invented one here just to fill out the page.

The same applies to the smallest order the kitchen will take, to how much notice it needs to prepare a catering order for your date, to whether trays can come to you or you're collecting them, and to how payment is handled when the order is confirmed. None of that is posted here, because all of it depends on the date, the size of the order, and what the kitchen has going on that week.

The fix for every one of those is the same call. Phone 718-799-7160, say roughly what the occasion is and how many people you're feeding, and the person on the line will walk the menu with you and size the order properly. That beats any calculator a website could give you, and it means a person confirms the order instead of a form guessing at it.

Ordering catering

FreeTown African & American Cuisine is at 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and takes catering orders by phone at 718-799-7160. The current list also lives on the FreeTown catering menu if you want to see it alongside the rest of what the kitchen serves.

Bring your date, a rough guest count and a first pass at which trays you want, and the team will help you land on the right combination and the right amount of food for your table. If the count moves afterwards, adding a pan is a phone call. It isn't a new order.