Why cooked weight and raw weight differ
You serve cooked meat but you buy it raw, and the gap between the two is where most over- and under-buying happens. Plan about half a pound of cooked meat per adult, then work backward to the raw amount using the yield for your cut. The tool shows both numbers so you take the right figure to the store and still know how much will land on the plate.
Yields change a lot by cut
Brisket is the extreme case: it can lose thirty to forty percent of its weight rendering, so half a pound cooked means buying close to eight-tenths of a pound to a pound raw per adult. Pulled pork yields about sixty percent, chicken around seventy percent, and lean boneless cuts the most. Bone-in cuts like ribs add another layer because part of the weight is bone, so a pound of ribs per adult is normal even though the meat itself is less. Picking the cut sets the yield, and the calculator applies it rather than leaving you to look it up.
Buying as the crowd grows
Because the per-person figure holds, scaling up is mostly about rounding raw weight to whole cuts and packs: whole briskets and pork shoulders come in a range of weights, and racks of ribs serve a set number of people, so a headcount of a hundred turns into a count of whole pieces rather than an exact pound figure. Planning to whole cuts also helps you cook evenly, since a single oversized piece behaves differently from several right-sized ones.