How-To Host the Easiest Party You'll Ever Throw: A Soup Contest
It’s that time of year again – Soup, mulled wine, cookies, hot chocolate, longer nights, cold wetaher, and soooo many warm fuzzy feelings. Why not celebrate the season with a fun, friendly competition with friends?! Do so with a soup party!
Get excited because we’re about to tell you exactly how you can host your very own soup party which might be the easiest party ever. Not only is it easy, but what other time do you get to taste 15+ home-cooked, delicious soups? Besides the home-cooked soups and a good time with friends, the best part about a soup party is that the bulk of the work is done for you as the host. Score, right!? That’s right, most of the work is done for you because your guests are bringing the main entree - soup!
First things first - what is a soup contest?
A soup contest is a simple and fun concept that exactly resembles a chili cook-off if you’re familiar but with soup. Everyone invited to your party brings a soup, preferably in a crockpot, to share (or a side dish, if soup-making isn’t a strong point) & all of the soups brought are tasted by all guests and voted on to determine a winner. Easy, peasy!
Party Logistics
Set-Up
As guests arrive with their soups, assign each soup a number & write it on a chalkboard with its name & corresponding number. Line all the soups up on the counter and place a number tag near or on each crockpot or pot so guests can keep track of which soup they’re tasting.
The Tasting
After everything is labeled, have your guests fill their plates with cups & try each of the soups. Encourage everyone to try as much as they’d like. Trust us, you’ll have leftovers!
The Voting
After everyone has had their fill, a vote is taken to decide the best soup of the evening! Have a station of slips of paper, pens, and a box or bowl for guests to put their votes in. Explain to guests to write their top three favorites. You can add a frame with voting directions placed in it near the voting station for a nice touch that is also super helpful.
The Winner
Once you’ve ensured that everyone has voted, count the votes up and announce the third, second, and first-place soups! Keep it easy with the prizes by giving a store-bought prize to each winner.
Other Party Logistics
Invites - Keep it simple and send your invite via text or online with a free service like Evite or Punchbowl. For a small fee you can send an elevated online invite via Paperless Post. If you’d like to dress up a text invite, try designing your invite on Canva or PicMonkey with their easy, free Invitation templates. Save the image to your phone & text them to your guests.
Decor
The decor can be as elaborate or as simple as you want. Keep it low-key with a few mason jars with tea lights tucked inside, and a few bouquets of seasonal flowers. Dress things up with more details like pumpkins & pinecones, chalkboards, and a cute fall bunting for fall. We also love framing cute fall printables and placing them around the house. The decor can also be very inexpensive. One year I made a fall leaf garland with simple construction paper & string. I drew, traced, and cut out maple leaves in front of the TV the week leading up to one of our soup parties. Over the week, with Netflix going, I made quite a few leaves! I attached them all to several strings and hung them as our table backdrop.
Party Supplies
desserts, bread, crackers, etc. - This is up to you! You can ask guests to bring dessert & bread or you, as the host, can provide it. We’ve done it both ways and both ways work great.
spoons, napkins, large paper plates, small cups - have guests place several cups on their plate like the above photo.
prizes - Provide 3 prizes for the top three winning soups. These prizes can be as inexpensive or as expensive as you’d like. In the past, we’ve done gift cards in increasing dominations from third to first place. Ex. $10 Starbucks gift card, $15 Amazon gift card, $25 Target gift card
decor wanted - ex. pumpkins, pinecones, mason jars with tea lights, framed fall sayings
a chalkboard or posterboard - You’ll need a chalkboard or some kind of board to write the soup names and numbers on. You can use a chalkboard or even a poster board for this. I also love using black foam boards from The Dollar Tree & writing on them with a white chalk marker.
soup number markers - Be sure to label each soup with its’ coordinating name & number from the chalkboard. You can do this simply by writing the number on a Post-it note or note card or dress it up with a cute printable on a card holder or any kind of place holder.
voting slips & pens / pencils - Provide an area with all the voting supplies needed.
extension cords - These are especially helpful when you have a lot of crockpots!
kid activities - If you have a lot of children attending providing a kid’s table with color sheets, a coloring table cloth, or an easy fall craft is a great idea.
kid’s food - Soup isn’t the easiest kid party food so we have always provided some kid-friendly options like chicken nuggets or sandwich squares.
What are you thankful for?
If you’re keeping with a harvest theme, another nice add is to have a place where guests can write what they are thankful for. You can also make this even easier by simply placing conversation cards with questions around Thankfulness at all the tables and encouraging guests to talk through them. If you’re doing this in the New Year, do the same but with a New Year nod.
Need some delicious soup recipes for your soup party? Try these!
Sweet Red Pepper Gouda Soup - I won with this recipe a few years ago!
Curried Pumpkin Soup - This was #1 at our 2015 party.
creamy onion soup - #2 at our 2015 party
taco soup - #3 at our 2015 party
Roasted Cauliflower & Aged Cheddar Soup
Are you planning to have a Soup Party? If so, we want to hear about it and see your pics! Tag us on Instagram at @TheCelebrateDaily so we can see! :)
