Food Service 101: Opening Your Own Place

Catering Your Next Major Event

Catering services can make it easy to feed a large number of guests. While these services can dramatically lower the work that you will be forced to do to provide food to these individuals, there is still some planning that is required when hiring caterers for your next event that you host.

Know Exactly What Type Of Silverware Is Needed

In addition to providing your guests with delicious food items, you will also need to make sure that they have the utensils that are needed to be able to eat these items. When meeting this need, you will want to avoid ordering unnecessary utensils as this could add to the costs of hosting the event, but you will need to ensure there are enough of the utensils that will be needed. As a result, it is usually best to consider the dishes and silverware after the menu for the event has been set.

Avoid Letting The Event Run Into The Meal Time

Timing the serving of the food is one of the most important factors in making sure that the guests are served delicious items to eat. If your event runs late, you could make it harder for the caterers to know when to have the food ready. This could lead to it being reheated too early, which could allow it to degrade before the guests arrive. For this reason, working closely with your catering service when devising the schedule for the event will be necessary to reduce this risk. When planning for the meal break for the event, it is important to include time for the guests to both eat at a comfortable pace while compensating for the time lost walking to the meal area and being served.

Give Your Guests Options

Choosing dishes that are tasty to all of your guests can be immensely challenging if you are having a lot of people attend or if you do not know them particularly well. One way to more effectively manage this situation will be to choose a menu that will allow guests to mix and match the items so that they can create the perfect plate or meal. While some may assume this will always require having a banquet style food service, it is possible to create a menu that will allow for a range of choices while still being full service. Planning these menus can require more thought, but it can allow you to accommodate the personal preferences of a wider range of your guests.