The Ultimate Printable Cheat Sheet for a Beautiful Grazing Table

If you’ve spent even just two minutes on social media recently, you’ve likely seen no fewer than 3,359 different grazing tables and cheese boards in your feed. That’s maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you get our point: Sprawling spreads featuring piles of meats, cheeses, and hearty snacks are Trendy with a capital T, and guests really enjoy them.

Cool! But, um, how does one actually set up a grazing table? When it comes down to building one, they’re almost as intimidating as they are pretty! What food should you buy? Where should you put your first pile? And the second? And, good gosh, how do you even know if you’ll have enough food? Take a deep breath. We’re here to help.

We came up with printable templates that will give you a place to start and can turn anyone into a charcuterie board-building champion. Simply open our free templates and print them out. Think of them like a paint-by-number — only instead of using paint, you’ll use food. It’s easy and foolproof. We promise.

First, think about how many people you’re trying to feed. One piece of paper is more than enough for one to two people. So that means that two pieces of paper will feed three or four people. And eight pieces will feed up to 16 people. (Count the total number of people you’ll have and divide by two: That’s how many pages you need.)

Print out the necessary number of pages and tile them on your table or counter. You can print all of the same template or mix and match between the two we’ve made. Turn one this way and another that way. You can lay them down however works best for your space. There’s no wrong answer and you can’t mess this up!

Next, cover the papers with parchment or wax paper. This way, you’re not putting oily prosciutto on printer paper. You’ll be able to see the template’s lines through the paper, so don’t worry about that.

Now, it’s time to gather your groceries! Each template has seven sections: meats, cheeses, salty things, etc. And, later in this post, we included a list of some specific groceries to pick up in order to fill out each section.

Our list is just a starting point and, again, there is no way to mess this up. If you’re using four pieces of paper, consider picking out four groceries from each section (for the sake of mixing things up), but know that you can absolutely repeat items throughout (doing so will also help to keep your costs down).

Here’s a quick cheat sheet, detailing roughly how much food you’ll need to get in order to fill out all seven sections on one piece of paper.

Now for the fun part: The painting! Er, the piling of the food! Start filling up the sections, one paper at a time. Lay down some crackers, pile up some nuts, fill a bowl with hummus — you get the idea. Keep going until every section and every page is full.

Consider this a jumping-off point while grocery shopping. There are, of course, lots of options that could definitely work. All of these options land on the savory side, but you could easily use our templates for candies, cookies, and other sweets, too.

Have you made a grazing table? Do you have any smart tips or must-have groceries to share? Tell us in the comments below!