What's the cheapest complete family meal option at Mai Thai Catering?

The two most affordable dishes on the Family Meal Pickup menu are American Hearty Beef Stew and Lemon Herb Grilled Chicken, both $21 per person. Each price already includes a falafel or cauliflower falafel appetizer, a mixed green salad with ranch or blue cheese dressing, a starch or vegetable side (a dinner roll for the beef stew, brown rice and special sauce for the chicken), and a Mixed Fruit Cup for dessert. Because those four courses are bundled into the $21 rather than priced separately, the effective cost per component runs lower than ordering a bare protein and adding sides elsewhere. Orders require a 3-person minimum per pack, mixed across any of the five dishes.

Is there a minimum order for Family Meal Pickup?

Yes, every Family Meal Pickup order has a 3-person minimum per pack. Those three portions don't have to be the same dish - you can mix and match freely across all five options (American Hearty Beef Stew, Lemon Herb Grilled Chicken, Grilled Pesto Salmon, Lemon Herb Grilled Steak, and Tenderloin Roast Beef), so a household of three can each choose the protein they actually want instead of ordering three of the cheapest dish just to hit the minimum. Orders are placed online through Toast, need to be submitted at least one day ahead of pickup, and are paid for securely online at checkout.

How far in advance do I need to order a family meal?

Family Meal Pickup orders need to be placed at least one day ahead of when you plan to pick them up. You order online through Toast - no phone call or quote request required - choose your dishes and quantities, and select a pickup time window for the next day. Payment is handled securely online during checkout, so there's nothing to settle in person at pickup. This one-day lead time is specific to the Family Meal Pickup menu; larger Office Catering orders for 10 or more guests are quoted separately by headcount and date.

What's included with each family meal dish, and is anything extra?

Every dish on the Family Meal Pickup menu includes the same four components at no extra charge: an appetizer (falafel or cauliflower falafel), a mixed green salad with a choice of ranch or blue cheese dressing, a starch or vegetable side specific to that entree, and a Mixed Fruit Cup for dessert. Nothing on this list is an upsell added after the per-person price - it's baked into the $21-$26 range across all five dishes. That's the main difference between this menu and a bare protein-and-rice order: you're comparing a complete four-course plate against a single-item price, not against another complete plate.

July 15, 2026

Cheap Family Meals in Atlanta That Don't Feel Cheap

Overhead view of a complete family meal pickup spread with grilled steak, rice, salad, a falafel appetizer, and a fruit cup dessert

Typing "cheap family meals Atlanta" into a search bar usually means one specific worry: feeding four or five people tonight without either cooking from scratch after a full workday or paying delivery fees and tip on food that arrives lukewarm. The instinct is to hunt for the lowest sticker price per plate, but a bare protein-and-rice box that leaves everyone still hungry an hour later isn't actually cheap - it's just cheap until someone raids the pantry at 9pm. The better question is what a complete plate costs once you count the sides, the appetizer, and the dessert that a from-scratch dinner would also require you to prep. That's the math this guide walks through, using Mai Thai's Family Meal Pickup menu as the working example.

What "Cheap" Actually Means When You're Feeding a Family

A genuinely cheap family meal isn't the one with the lowest per-person number on the menu - it's the one where you don't have to buy or cook anything else to call dinner finished. If a discount protein box gets you meat and one side, you're still assembling a salad, cutting up fruit, or opening a bag of chips to round it out, and that time and grocery cost belongs in the real total even though it never shows up on the receipt. Every dish on our Family Meal Pickup menu is built the other way: the appetizer, salad, starch or veggie side, and Mixed Fruit Cup dessert are already inside the per-person price, so the number you see is the number you pay.

The Real Comparison: Cost Per Complete Plate, Not Cost Per Protein

Line up the five dishes and the range runs from $21 to $26 per person: American Hearty Beef Stew and Lemon Herb Grilled Chicken both sit at $21, Grilled Pesto Salmon comes in at $25, and Lemon Herb Grilled Steak and Tenderloin Roast Beef top the list at $26. On paper, that's a few dollars above the "$20 and under" bracket a lot of families search for. But each of those prices covers four courses, not one - a falafel or cauliflower falafel appetizer, a mixed green salad with ranch or blue cheese, a starch or vegetable side specific to that dish, and a fruit cup for dessert. Priced separately at a typical sit-down chain's to-go counter, that combination routinely clears $20 before the protein is even added.

Why the Included Sides Are the Value Lever

The sides are where the actual savings live, and they're worth naming specifically because they're not filler. The Lemon Herb Grilled Chicken and Lemon Herb Grilled Steak both come with brown rice and a special sauce; the American Hearty Beef Stew comes with a dinner roll; the Grilled Pesto Salmon comes with pasta and brussels sprouts; and the Tenderloin Roast Beef comes with mashed potatoes and green beans. Add the falafel appetizer and mixed green salad that ride along with every dish, and you've got a plate that would otherwise require picking up two or three separate items - and paying convenience pricing on each of them - just to match what's already bundled into one per-person price.

Close-up of the falafel appetizer, mixed green salad, and mixed fruit cup dessert included with every family meal dish

Picking the Right Protein Tier for Your Budget

The five-dish spread isn't random - it functions as a budget dial. If you're stretching a weekly budget across a few nights, the $21 tier (beef stew or lemon herb chicken) gets every person the same four-course plate as the $26 tier, just with a different center-of-plate protein. Save the Grilled Pesto Salmon or Tenderloin Roast Beef for the night you actually want it to feel like an occasion - payday, a Friday, a night nobody wants to cook. Because the order is mix-and-match by the person rather than locked to one dish for the whole household, you can put two people on the $21 tier and two on the $26 tier in the same pickup order and pay exactly what each choice costs, nothing averaged or upcharged.

The 3-Person Minimum and Mixing Dishes to Hit It

Every order has a 3-person minimum per pack, but that minimum is easier to hit than it sounds because it's counted across dishes, not per dish. A household of three can order one chicken, one beef stew, and one salmon in a single pack and clear the minimum without anyone eating a protein they didn't want. That flexibility matters for budget planning specifically: instead of committing three people to the cheapest dish just to reach the minimum, you let each person pick what they actually want and let the total add up naturally instead of rounding everyone down to match the group.

A family sharing a weeknight family meal pickup dinner together at home

A Worked Example: Family of Four Under $100

Put real numbers on it. A family of four ordering two Lemon Herb Grilled Chicken at $21 each and two American Hearty Beef Stew at $21 each totals $84 before tax - four complete plates, each with its own appetizer, salad, side, and dessert, for a household that clears the 3-person minimum with room to spare. Swap in a nicer protein for two people and it still holds together: two chicken at $21 plus two Tenderloin Roast Beef at $26 runs $94 before tax, still under $100 for a full sit-down dinner with dessert built in for four people. See our family meal cost breakdown for more combinations sized to different households.

When to Switch to Office Catering Instead

Family Meal Pickup is sized for households, not gatherings - once you're feeding ten or more people, the per-person math and the pickup logistics both point toward our separate Office Catering menus instead. The Atlanta Fajita Bar starts at $16.99/person and Atlanta Brack's grain bowl bar starts at $17.99/person, both quoted directly to your headcount, date, and menu through the quote form rather than ordered online.

Order Tonight, Pick Up Tomorrow

Ordering is built to be fast, not to require a phone call or a back-and-forth quote: place your order online through Toast, pre-order at least one day ahead, choose a pickup window for the next day, and pay securely online before you ever walk in. There's no minimum spend beyond the 3-person pack, no haggling over substitutions, and no guessing what's included - the appetizer, salad, side, and dessert are already built into every price on the menu. If tonight's the night you'd rather not cook, order Family Meal Pickup and pick a pickup time tomorrow that works for your family.