So you're getting married, CONGRATS!...Now it's time to plan that wedding. It is a magical thing planning a wedding and I love helping out with the dining aspect. However it breaks my heart when I hear people not having the best experience with caterers.
Luckily venues do (most of the time) a great job in selecting great, reliable caterers to work with. This is the positive, the negative is they usually come with a big price tag because the venue needs to make its money and so does the caterer.
So a lot of people have now started doing OIY (organise it yourself) weddings to keep cost down which means finding your own venue, drinks, flowers etc and caterer. The positive of this is it's much cheaper (most of the time), the negative is it comes with stress and talking to a lot of different service providers.
Booking a caterer for your wedding can add to that stressful experience. In my opinion at a wedding the three most important things are the venue, drink and the food. Now here is the truth about catering - not all caterers are made the same. There is nothing worse than when the day comes, everything is organised but your caterer arrives and you have that horrible realisation that you've been catfished! The set up doesn't quite look as professional as it did in the pictures and you're wondering how 2 staff are going to feed 200 people.
There are three things you can do to make sure you don't get caught out.
Ask Questions
Ask for References
Set Expectations
QUESTIONS:
This is all about the quality of questions. Five well thought out questions can reveal more than 50 broad questions could.
Instead of "Do you cater weddings?" You could ask them "what do you consider your speciality event to be?" This reframes the question from a simple yes or no to them providing some context and examples.
Let's say you ask them what they consider their speciality for catering is. This will set you up for some further questions which will give you great insights.
If they say Weddings - Ask them what type of wedding. Weddings could mean anything. Are they talking sit down silver service, or are they talking relaxed buffet style.
This is just an example but don't be scared to ask the follow on questions not many people will ask. This is the place where you get the real insights in to the experience and knowledge of your caterer.
If they say sit down silver service, how many people are we talking? Silver service for a room of 40 is very different from a room of 120. Have they ever done an event for 120 people? How many courses? How many staff did they bring to that event?
If they don't answer all the questions perfectly this doesn't mean they're not the right caterer for you, it just means you understand their experience and you're booking them knowing all the information.
Now here is a great tip that will set you up for point number 2. Using the example above, once they have given you details of the event they specialise in, ask them to give you an example of an event they have done like that in the past year.
Then you're set up perfectly for section number 2:
REFERENCES:
Ask them if they have anyone you can contact for a reference. Any caterer should be proud of the service they provide and would actively encourage you to talk to their previous customers, there is nothing better than a recommendation from someone who has previously used your services.
Now playing devils advocate here, if you're a more sceptical person and worried about how genuine the reference is, then it is great to use the tip at the end of the first point. If they have already described an event to you, how it operated, what their role was, the amount of people, then you know every detail. So ask them for a reference for that event.
This gives you a reference that they couldn't of planned and also is a great way to sniff out any exaggerations of their skills and experience when you contact that reference.
This is a great way to get a real insight in to what the caterer is like and nearly eliminate any chance of things going wrong.
Now you now know the caterer, you've decided they're the right one for you. Now its time to put a full proof strategy in place to ensure complete success on the day.
SET EXPECTATIONS:
Everyone is human and sometimes things get lost in translation so there is an easy, simple way to get past this. Set expectations.
What do you want from the caterer at your wedding day? Write them down.
Delicious food goes without saying but think beyond that.
Want all the staff in the same uniform? Specify it
Want them to stay behind and help tidy the wedding? Specify it
Want them to arrive 3 hours earlier? Specify it
You get the picture but it just means when they day comes and if you expected something and spoke to them about it, they will deliver it. However if you had just assumed it would happen, well that's up to interpretation
This is just 3 quick actionable things you can do to reduce the chances of a bad caterer on your special day.