When you're cooking a dinner, you already bought all the food as a pre-paid expense for the most part. Or it's ambiguous enough as things are finalized yet that

When you're cooking a dinner, you already bought all the food as a pre-paid expense for the most part. Or it's ambiguous enough as things are finalized yet that there's some certainty in how many people will actually show up / be hungry / etc. It's also not a lot of extra work to cook for 5 people compared to 3 or even 1, generally speaking. The initial investment of time is the big burden, and then it might be a little extra effort to add additional people. The food is also a lot less expensive in bulk when cooking at home. Doing 0 planning or pre-effort and buying takeout during the event is like you specifically planned to share the cost because you didn't want to do any preplanning. You didn't even call ahead to have the things delivered at a specific time. The cost in money directly scales to the amount of order. More people is always directly scaled more money, and it's pretty expensive to boot. If you're eating, you're not consuming food that was otherwise wasted or leftovers. You're a new premium scaled cost. The awkwardness here isn't the medium people are reaching the end goal of feeding their friends. It's really the planning and effort put in up front. Think about it from the reverse situation. If it WOULD have really hurt you financially to order food, but you technically could have struggled through the cost, how would you have silently asked for help other than waiting until last minute to order during the event in hopes people may pitch in? There may be a social obligation to order food where asking for people to pitch in may cause tension. For example, hosting a party at a nice new house but you were just laid off after scheduling the party and don't want to derail the rare gathering's vibes. If you find yourself in this situation and you are going to order food, I recommend pizza by the way. Just order a few different ones (including a vegetarian / vegan option or whatever if you have to guess people's preferences) but generally asking for preferences on pizza is not awkward. Pizza is an ambiguous delivery option where it's implied to be shared. It's similar to many general home cooked meals where the amount anybody has or doesn't have is ambiguous. Compared to takeout style delivery where every has a dedicated packaged meal and you either ordered 3xMeal or 4xMeal where the multiplier is absolute and the amount per person is without ambiguity.