The Home Entertaining Study: How Hosts Really Plan, Coordinate, and Cook for Dinner Parties (Full Report)
When Canadians sit down to plan a dinner party, they don’t open an app. They open nearly five of them — and then reach for a pen.
That is the headline finding of this study, based on in-depth interviews with home hosts ranging in ages from 20s to 70s, conducted between June and July 2025. The research, carried out in partnership with Impact Consulting Group — the student-run strategy consulting arm hosted by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management — reveals a home entertaining landscape that is deeply fragmented, emotionally charged, and ripe for reinvention.
Key Findings
- 4.7 tools per host: The average respondent uses 4.7 different apps, platforms, and analogue methods to plan a single gathering — from Google searches and Instagram for recipe discovery, to iPhone Notes and paper lists for groceries, to group texts and WhatsApp for guest coordination, to spreadsheets for budgeting. Power hosts use six to eight.
- Zero overlap: Across all interviews, not a single pair of respondents reported using the same combination of tools. Every household has assembled its own improvised system — functional enough to get by, but a persistent source of forgotten details and last-minute stress.
- ~82% cite menu planning as their top frustration: The stress is not about cooking ability. It is about the paralyzing volume of decisions: what to serve, which recipes to trust, how to accommodate dietary restrictions, and how to make the dishes work together as a cohesive meal.
- ~91% default to “safe” dishes for larger groups: When hosting six or more guests, the vast majority of respondents retreat to familiar, tried-and-true recipes — even when they want more variety — driven by fear of disappointing guests rather than lack of culinary skill.
- ~76% say timing is more stressful than cooking: Sequencing multiple dishes so everything comes out at the right moment was cited as a top pain point across nearly all experience levels, from casual hosts to accomplished home cooks.
- ~96% rely on text messaging as their primary coordination tool: Group texts and WhatsApp threads have become the de facto infrastructure for gathering coordination in Canada — not purpose-built hosting or event tools.
Note: All percentages are estimated from qualitative thematic analysis and are directional in nature; they are not statistically representative of the general population.
The Cobbled-Together Kitchen
The study paints a vivid picture of how Canadians actually plan gatherings in practice. Recipe discovery begins on Google, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Promising recipes get screenshot or bookmarked — or, just as often, mentally filed away. Grocery lists take shape in iPhone Notes, on paper, on a kitchen whiteboard, or in Google Keep. Some respondents photograph their handwritten lists before heading to the store. Guest coordination unfolds across text threads, WhatsApp groups, Facebook Messenger, and email, depending on the social circle. Budgeting and cost splitting, when they happen at all, live in spreadsheets or apps like Splitwise.
No single product bridges more than two of these domains. The result is what researchers describe as a uniquely improvised system in every household — a patchwork of tools, habits, and workarounds that each host has assembled independently over years of trial and error.
“We made a dessert that we love but one of our guests hated because it had cheese. It took a long time to prepare, so we had no time to make something else.”
— Study participant, Toronto
This fragmentation has real consequences. Hosts described forgotten ingredients, duplicated dishes at potlucks, untracked dietary restrictions, and cost-sharing disputes that went unresolved for weeks. One respondent recalled an Airbnb weekend where poor coordination over a group chat led to meal duplication and a last-minute pivot to finger foods. Another described a smoker equipment failure that forced total menu improvisation with guests already arriving.
The Menu Anxiety Cycle
Perhaps the study’s richest finding is the emotional pattern it uncovers around menu planning. The dominant feeling among respondents was not excitement about cooking, but anxiety about choosing what to serve. This anxiety intensifies with group size: the larger the gathering, the more hosts retreat to familiar ground.
The pattern is cyclical. Hosts feel decision fatigue when confronted with an overwhelming volume of recipes online. They worry about accommodating dietary restrictions — vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, halal, kosher — sometimes for a single table of eight. They fear that an ambitious recipe will fail under pressure. So, they default to dishes they’ve made before, which work reliably but leave them feeling creatively stagnant. Several respondents used the same word independently: the menu has become “repetitive.”
“We default to familiar dishes for many reasons — delicious, less planning, you can never go wrong with it. It kind of gets repetitive though.”
— Study participant, Toronto
This anxiety extends beyond the menu itself. Respondents described agonizing over whether dishes would complement each other as a cohesive meal, rather than a collection of unrelated plates. Timing compounds the stress: getting a main course, two sides, and a dessert to converge at the right moment was described by multiple respondents as the single most stressful aspect of hosting — more daunting than the cooking itself.
“Timing dishes and managing prep is the most stressful part, not the cooking itself.”
— Study participant, Toronto
Experienced home cooks reported the same pressure. One respondent who regularly synthesizes multiple recipes to create elaborate multi-course meals described keeping a handwritten paper sequence of tasks alongside two different apps for recipe storage and grocery lists — a level of operational complexity more commonly associated with professional kitchens than Tuesday night dinners.
Connection Over Perfection
Beneath the logistics, the study reveals that hosting is fundamentally an emotional act. When asked what they hope guests will feel, the most common responses were not about food quality. An estimated 84% of respondents wanted guests to feel “connected” or “closer to others.” Roughly 76% wanted guests to feel relaxed and comfortable. The language respondents used was strikingly consistent: “connection,” “community,” “closer than before.”
“I want guests to feel connected and joyful. The goal is for everyone to leave feeling closer than before.”
— Study participant, Toronto
For hosts themselves, the emotional stakes are just as high. An estimated 68% described wanting to feel proud of their home and meal, while roughly 63% said they wanted to feel relaxed rather than exhausted. But a striking pattern emerged: the fear of disappointing guests was cited more frequently (~47%) than the desire to impress them (~42%). Hosting, it turns out, is driven more by risk-aversion than by ambition.
This emotional weight helps explain why many respondents admitted to avoiding hosting altogether. Several described wanting to connect with friends more but being deterred by the perceived effort. One respondent captured the tension concisely: the stress and perceived time and monetary costs result in avoidance of hosting, despite genuinely wanting to bring people together. Young families were particularly affected: those with children under five reported an estimated 71% reduction in hosting frequency, driven by unpredictable childcare demands and the sheer exhaustion of managing a household. Empty nesters, by contrast, showed an approximate 43% increase.
Cultural Dimensions of the Canadian Table
The study captured hosting patterns across a broad cross-section of cultural backgrounds, a reflection of the Greater Toronto Area’s diversity. Rather than a single Canadian hosting archetype, researchers found multiple distinct traditions, each with its own rhythms, structures, and values.
Respondents from Jewish cultural backgrounds described food as a “love language” — with higher hosting frequency, multi-course meals, and recurring anchors like Shabbat dinners that create a natural weekly hosting cadence. Italian-background families emphasized outdoor entertaining, heritage recipe preservation, and the generational transmission of dishes that carry deep personal significance. Respondents from South Asian backgrounds described hosting gatherings of 30 or more guests with collaborative cooking, adapting menus to the specific cultural palates of attendees. East Asian respondents described a multi-dish dining structure — multiple shared plates plus rice — that differs fundamentally from the Western appetizer-main-dessert course progression.
One Bangladeshi-Canadian respondent described hosting weekly informal gatherings with friends from across South Asian, East Asian, and Latino backgrounds, adjusting the menu each time to reflect the cultural makeup of the guest list. For international students in particular, hosting becomes a bridge to community — a way to recreate the warmth of home during festivals like Eid, Diwali, or Lunar New Year when family is far away.
These variations point to a meaningful gap in existing meal planning tools, which are overwhelmingly designed around a Western, single-course paradigm and rarely accommodate the multi-dish, communal serving styles that define much of the world’s dining cultures.
Post-Pandemic Shifts in How We Gather
The study was conducted three years after the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, and respondents described a landscape that has not returned to pre-pandemic norms. The direction of change is consistent: toward smaller, more frequent, more intentional gatherings. The large, infrequent dinner party has given way to more casual, recurring get-togethers — a couple over for dinner midweek, a Sunday brunch with neighbours, a low-key backyard gathering rather than a formal sit-down event.
Roughly 18% of respondents described a shift away from alcohol at their gatherings, with non-alcoholic beverages, cannabis products, and mocktails replacing wine and cocktails as the social lubricant of choice. One respondent described serving virgin margaritas at barbecues, noting that alcohol has become less important to his social circle. This trend mirrors broader industry data on the growth of the non-alcoholic beverage market, but the study captures it at the household level — as a deliberate hosting choice, not just a retail purchasing trend.
The pandemic also appears to have accelerated a collapse in the formality of hosting. Respondents described events where guests are explicitly invited to help themselves, where potluck contributions are the norm rather than the exception, and where the host’s primary goal is creating a relaxed atmosphere rather than a curated experience. The emotional vocabulary shifted accordingly: “cozy,” “casual,” and “relaxed” appeared far more frequently than “impressive” or “elegant.”
The Persistence of Pen and Paper
One of the study’s more surprising findings is the enduring role of analogue tools in an otherwise digital world. An estimated 35% of respondents still rely on pen and paper for some aspect of hosting — grocery lists, recipe annotations, task sequences, or menu planning. Several keep physical binders of printed recipes with handwritten modifications accumulated over years of cooking. One respondent described printing recipes from websites and annotating them by hand, building a personalized cookbook that no app has successfully replicated.
This attachment to paper is not a rejection of technology. It reflects a gap: the digital tools available do not match the speed, flexibility, and tactile satisfaction of scribbling a list on the back of an envelope. Respondents who use recipe apps described friction points — too many clicks, cluttered interfaces, inefficient editing — that drive them back to paper for the moments that matter most. The whiteboard in the kitchen, the photographed grocery list, the handwritten prep sequence: these are not relics, but active workarounds for tools that have not yet earned their place in the hosting workflow.
About the Study
The Canadian Home Entertaining Study is based on in-depth qualitative interviews conducted between June and July 2025 in partnership with Impact Consulting Group, the student-run strategy consulting arm hosted by the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
Interviews ranged from 30 to 60 minutes and used a structured format covering hosting frequency, planning workflows, pain points, tool usage, cultural patterns, coordination breakdowns, and emotional outcomes. Respondents were predominantly based in the Greater Toronto Area, with additional participants from Vancouver, Hamilton, Halifax, and international locations including the United States, Israel, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Age distribution spanned from the 1940s to the 2000s birth decades, with the largest cohort born in the 1990s.
All percentages cited in this release are estimated from qualitative thematic coding and are directional in nature. They are not statistically representative of the general population.
About The Gourmet Host
The Gourmet Host is a Toronto-based platform dedicated to making home entertaining more accessible and enjoyable. Founded in 2023, the company publishes hosting guides, recipes, and entertaining resources at thegourmethost.com and most recently published a mobile application designed to simplify dinner party planning and coordination.
