5 Questions To Ask Your Caterer

Get ready for your mouth to water! If you have been following us on any of our social media, you’ll know how much we love our food. :) Today on the J&A Blog, we are bringing in one of our all-time favorite caterers to share her advice on questions to ask your caterer during the meeting! Margaret from The Chef Next Door is an amazing chef and an even more incredible person. Read on to see what advice she has for us!

1. Do you offer menu tastings?

It is important to make sure that your caterer’s food tastes good! Be wary of a caterer who will not allow you to try their food, or try to charge you an exorbitant amount to do so. Typically, a menu tasting is part of a caterer’s customer acquisition cost (just like paying to be a member of a directory like WeddingWire.com) and is something they should happily do for you in order to book you.

2. Are you health department regulated?

Beware of “home” caterers. Food needs to be prepared in a licensed and regulated kitchen in order to be guaranteed to be safe for your guests to eat throughout the night. Receptions often last 4+ hours, and that just happens to be the exact window of opportunity for bacteria growth (sorry for the ick factor!), so if your food was made in a non-commercial kitchen several hours ago, that can open the door for all types of badness for you and your guests if you eat something that is unsafe.

3. Are you insured?

Things happen. Car wrecks. Tornadoes. Fires. Power outages. There are dozens of things that could prevent a caterer from actually providing the food to your reception. A proper caterer should carry at least a million dollars worth of liability insurance coverage to cover anything and everything that could potentially go wrong.

4. Tell me about your staff.

It is okay to grill your caterer about their staff. How old are they? How do they dress? Are they allowed smoke breaks? The food can be as delicious and beautiful as you’d hope, but if an unkempt, rude, slouchy, cigarette-reeking staff member is serving it to you, it can ruin the entire experience. The food itself is only half the battle; the serving staff is a HUGE part of the success or failure of the event!

Your caterer should spend a great deal of time selecting the right people to represent his/her business and training them to execute the event perfectly. Staff should be well-dressed, preferably matching, clean and hygienic, professional, punctual, helpful, knowledgeable, and kind. Oh, and we can’t forget PRESENT….not hiding in corners playing Candy Crush.

5. I’m on a budget. What is the most bang for my buck?

A caterer should be respectful of your budget, and if your budget does not match with their offerings, they should kindly decline to bid for your wedding and refer you to someone who could more easily accommodate your budget. If you give a caterer a budget, they should deduct any labor fees/taxes/extra costs such as disposable goods from that budget, then create the menu based on what is left, packing as much substance and variety in there as possible.

A knowledgeable caterer should know ways to trim or cut corners to accommodate your budget (for example, maybe you could provide your own disposable goods or beverages) and should offer this information freely. You may not be able to afford a full Beef Carving Station, but your caterer should suggest Beef Sliders or something along those lines but much more cost-effective.

As a general rule of thumb, buffet dinners are substantially less costly than plated dinners or menus with a lot of moving parts like tiny hors d’ouerves or action stations, so if you know you are working with a lower budget, don’t go asking your caterer to pull a rabbit out of a hat. And for good measure, to figure your budget, most caterers work with a price per person.

So if for example you are having 150 people and your budget is about $3000, that leaves your caterer with $16/person, taking into consideration about 20% left for labor and taxes. If you can imagine having $16 to go eat at a nice restaurant for dinner, that’s not terribly much and wouldn’t get you much variety. So even though $3000 seems plenty generous, when it comes to feeding that many people, that’s a bit on the lower end.

Before meeting with your caterer, you should have a pretty good idea of your budget and be reasonable about how far that budget is going to get you. Catering prices are fairly closely related to restaurant prices, only a bit higher due to the “we bring it to you” factor. So don’t give your caterer a $10/person budget and ask them for Shrimp and Beef Tenderloin and a Bananas Foster Flambé made-to-order station. They will (hopefully politely!) tell you it is not possible.

All in all, having extraordinary food can really make a reception! No matter the style of caterer you select, they should be kind and gracious and willing to help or answer any questions at any time. After all, caterers’ primary reason of existence is to serve, and if a caterer doesn’t have a servant’s heart, run fast in the other direction! Catering can be a very lucrative and profitable business, but it’s not usually the reason we get into this business. There are hundreds of much easier ways to make a lot more money. Caterers choose to cater because we get to serve people, we get to make people happy through our food and provide a great experience to such an important day in one’s life.

Every detail of your wedding is important, and food is no exception! Make sure you chose a caterer that you feel comfortable with and excited about – and make sure you get a little take-out box of that delicious reception food before you leave for your honeymoon! :)

A shout out to Margaret with The Chef Next Door for sharing her thoughts and for creating the mouthwatering morsels in all the pictures.

*hugs*

Amber