venue

One of the first items on a to-do list of planning a big event like a wedding is to pick the venue. It needs to suit your style, accommodate the number of anticipated guests, and can have a significant impact on the overall feel of your special day.

Here are some things to look for when choosing your venue:

Size

This may be obvious, but if you know you’re going to have 200 guests and fall in love with a space that can only hold 60, it’s likely not going to work. You can always ask the venue if they have alternate spaces on site but don’t waste your time, and then get disappointed, visiting a space that literally won’t fit your needs. And if you are hosting a smaller soiree, a large event space will seem too empty. You don’t need to know exact numbers before you book, but having a rough idea (50? 150? 300?) will help you narrow your options down.

Cost

Wedding Costs Can Add Up Quickly.
Image Source: Flickr

Many people have a pretty tight budget and wedding costs add up quicker than you’d like to think! Like with size, cost is a factor that can help you rule out certain venues immediately. How much of your budget is allocated to the venue is ultimately up to you. Just keep in mind if you do go over-budget here, you might have to cut costs somewhere else. According to The Knot, you can expect your reception costs (venue, food, drinks, etc.) to account for around 50% of your total budget.

Availability

Have your heart set on a summer wedding? Be prepared for many venues to book up quickly and far in advance! This is especially true for the popular summer “wedding season”. If you’re flexible with your dates, you’ll have more options. If you are visiting the venue during a season other than the one you plan to get married in, make sure you ask to see pictures of the space in your anticipated season. If your wedding is during a hot or cold time of year, make sure you ask about heating or air conditioning!

Style

If you envision a romantic traditional wedding ceremony and reception, you might be more attracted to a venue like a vineyard or golf course. You’ll probably steer clear of a modern industrial-style space!

Accommodation & Transportation

Make Sure Your Wedding Guests Have Transportation.
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Are you getting married in a rustic barn in the countryside? Sounds lovely, but make sure your guests have access to convenient accommodations and transportation! If your venue is difficult to access or out of the way for most people, you can offer a shuttle bus. Your guests will be partying and you want to make sure they get home or to the hotel safely! Hotels often offer deals for booking blocks of rooms designated for your guests so call around to nearby hotels. Other options include bed and breakfasts or see if local guests are willing to take in out of towners!

Catering

The first thing you need to find out is whether the venue is full-service or not. Either way, some venues require you use certain vendors such as caterers and rental companies. This doesn’t give you the flexibility to shop around. Also consider the style of service – family style, plated, buffet?

Whether casual or elegant, Austin Gourmet offers a wide variety of wedding menu options. Contact us today to discuss your special event!

One of the greatest things about working in the catering industry is the variety of your day-to-day life. Now we don’t necessarily mean this in a workload sense, because washing dishes, setting tables and plating up food – those can all become rather routine, and like the majority of routines, a little laborious.

The variety, the thing that causes so many people’s love for catering, comes in the form of the people you meet and the places you see. When you’re an off-premises catering company, you travel from venue to venue and deliver different food choices and drinks selections almost every day. There are never quite two events the same. Though the fields in which those events take place are always similar.

What fields would those be? We hear you ask. Well, you came to the right place, because you’re about to find out.

Social Events And Gatherings

Social Events Mean Great Food and Drinks.
Image Source: Wikimedia

This is perhaps the widest market in catering, and is without a doubt the one that presents the most opportunity. There’ll never be a time in the human lifespan in which social events aren’t tied in with good food and flowing drinks. It’s just the way we humans are, the way we always have been.

Things that fall under this category vary from wedding receptions and birthday parties, to graduation ceremonies and bar mitzvahs. Social events will always be there for caterers, and one thing’s for sure, where there is a social event, there will always be a need for good food.

Corporate Purposes

Corporate Catering is Becoming More Popular.
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Who doesn’t love an exciting plate of food to spice up a boring meeting? Corporate catering is becoming more and more popular nowadays and this is primarily because of increased workloads, and subsequently, less time for preparing food.

The main duties for the caterer here are to prepare breakfast and lunch platters, and get them to the hungry office workers before they chew their fingers off mid meeting. It is convenience that benefits the client in this context, which is exactly why corporate catering will continue to multiply steadily over the years.

Cultural Events

These can be very similar to the types of catering that take place within social events, only the context of the duties can vary a little. Think of cultural catering taking place in more public domains as opposed to privately-organized gatherings.

Things like opera and playhouses, where more cultured things are taking place. Because of the venue, the menu tends to change to a more formal sort of vibe, with increases in the quality and finesse of the dishes.

That Covers The Bases

Consider yourself clued up now, and use this information wisely if you are considering breaking into the catering industry. It’s definitely a market that is growing at an impressive rate, and will likely continue at a strong pace indefinitely.

It’s like we said, if it’s anything to do with food, there’ll never be a shortage of business opportunities. People are literally obsessed with food, and that’s why, as a good caterer, you should be too!

So you’re planning for that big event and have most of the things on your list covered. You have your occasion, you have your venue and you have your guest list – the next thing to get sorted is your catering service.

There are many things to consider when choosing the perfect caterer for your event (you can check out some ways to do find the right caterer in this article – link to other article I wrote here) and you have to make use of what information you already have. That being said, there are also many mistakes you can make when choosing a catering company too, and mistakes you cannot be doing with, not when planning the event of your dreams.

Luckily for you though, we’re here to give you some guidance on the matter, and have selected three potential pitfalls so you can avoid these mistakes when making your selection. Get your notepad and pen out, it’s time to take some notes.

1: Overdoing The Food Choices

Guests can Become Overwhelmed with too Many Choices.
Image Source: Wikimedia

Variety is the spice of life, as they say, but in circumstances such as at a social event, variety can also be your gravest enemy.

There is a limit as far as menu variety goes, and that limit tends to fall somewhere between ‘it’s a tough choice’ and ‘pass me page twenty-three of the menu.’ There’s nothing quite worse than having too many options, sometimes it’s less tragic to not have enough. Your guests should feel as though they have a nice wide-range of choices, but shouldn’t be swarmed with thirty different options and combinations.

Keep things fresh but don’t go crazy. Have a look at some of our sample menus.

2: Going Way Over Your Budget

Always Leave a Little Leeway in Your Budget.
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Your budget should always have a little leeway, but when you start creeping over it by more than a couple hundred dollars you’re asking for trouble.

One way to avoid this is to select your caterer in the early stages of your event planning. Beside your venue and guest list, your caterer is the next most important thing, so making sure you leave room in your budget to hire the perfect caterer is imperative.

3: Failing To Provide Enough Food

This all ties in with your budgeting and is just as important as anything else.

If your guests are left unfed, it doesn’t matter how glorious the rest of the event is, it’ll end up being a total disaster. No guest wants to go to an event where there isn’t enough food for them all. This is the 21^st century, there’s no longer room for sharing!

Make sure you choose enough food from your caterer and if it’s an all-day event, make sure there are regular snack intervals and enough finger-food for everybody. There’s nothing worse than a bunch of hungry guests, especially if there’s alcohol on the go too…

Now You Know

There’s no need to fret anymore, you now know of three things that you must absolutely avoid, so essentially, you’re three things smarter than you were five minutes ago. Of course, there are many other things to avoid when selecting your caterer, but we don’t want to reveal all of the possible places you could go wrong, do we? What would be the fun in that?

Catering comes in many different styles and formats, and of course, each different style is appropriate for different sorts of gatherings and events.

Types of catering, meaning the types of foods and drinks that are served and in what quantities, and also decorations, layouts and inclusions, can be more structurally complex than people first think, and that is the exact reason behind us creating this list.

So here you have it, four different types of catering and what sorts of thing to expect with them.

Corporate Catering

Having Your Corporate Event Catered Leaves You More Time for Work.
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We’ve all been there, gathered in the meeting room or in a conference or just in the office block in general, thinking that we could really use some nice finger food and a selection of tasty drinks right about now. Well, this is where corporate catering comes in.

The benefits of having food taken care of for you are many. With having food delivered to the workplace, it takes the thought of it off your mind, leaving you to focus on the more important tasks at hand and allowing you more time to work.

Popular food types in this sort of catering include: box lunches, a selection of traditional buffets and continental breakfasts – sounds tasty!

Social Events

Catering Social Events Removes the Stress of the Situation.
Image Source: Wikimedia

Basically a more laidback, fun version of the above form of catering. Catering for social events places a little less stress on speed and ease, and a little more on entertainment and the fun-factor of the venue. Things that wouldn’t quite go down to well in an office environment. At least not if you actually wanted to get some work done…

Whether it is a BBQ, a birthday, a christening – whatever the occasion: expect balloons, appetizers, good food and of course good drinks, with your very own bartender. Fancy!

Concession Catering

This is catering on a whole new level, and should not be handled by anyone other than the pros.

In this generation, and in most generations before, wherever there are a lot of people, there’s also a lot of food. Catering of this type tends to cover major sporting events and public gatherings like parades or carnivals.

Expect burger stand foods: burgers, hotdogs, bacon cheese fries, ice cream, donuts – pretty much anything delicious you can think of, it’ll all be there.

Wedding After Parties

After Wedding Catering is a Great Way to End the Big Day.
Image Source: Wikimedia

A spin of finesse comes into play where wedding catering is concerned.

The last thing a bride or groom wants is a sloppy service at their wedding, which is why catering companies work very hard alongside them and with their direct instructions, in order to create the day of their dreams.

From the drinks menu and the cake, all the way down to the decorations and what type of small fruit the dessert will be topped with – all of these things must be considered when catering for a wedding. And that’s not even the half of it!

Consider Yourself Educated

Now that you’ve had the rundown of what the different types of catering are and what they cover, you can select what sorts of things you’ll need with more confidence. So you can go on positively, and select the type of catering you need to make the amazing event you’re planning even more amazing.

Getting married is the happiest time of your life, but unfortunately, it can also be the most stressful. From the dress to the venue, making decisions is a huge part of this big day. One of the hardest decisions, which is determined based on your budget, is what to serve your guests at the reception. Is it a finger food only party? Or is it a sit-down meal. Truth is, nine out of ten weddings opt for a buffet. Now, which buffet is for you?

Summer Lovin’ BBQ Buffet

This moderately priced buffet consists of some great food, perfect for a rustic themed wedding. The food served with this buffet are hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, grilled potatoes, garden salad, chef’s salad, pasta salad and your classic cheese and fruit platters. 

A post shared by Lisa (@__liisaache) on Apr 27, 2017 at 11:20pm PDT

Soup Du Jour Buffet

This is a buffet that happens to be an inexpensive choice for those weddings on a budget. Simply put, the food is a wide range of soup partnered with a variety of sandwiches. A common favorite is Italian Wedding soup partnered with a ham and brie sandwich on a croissant. Minestrone is a fan favorite as well, and that goes best with roast beef. 

A post shared by The Fitz Bar & Restaurant (@thefitzvail) on Feb 7, 2017 at 5:35pm PST

Breakfast for Dinner Buffet

Who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner? This simple, low cost buffet is enough to fill both the stomach and heart of each guest. The food included is generally scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, hashbrowns and pancakes topped with delicious whipped cream and strawberries. Milk, juice and coffee are popular beverages to serve with this type of buffet. 

A post shared by jrin70 (@jrin70) on May 7, 2017 at 8:11am PDT

Surf & Turf Buffet

This type of buffet is pretty expensive if you consider how many people you have to feed compared to the average cost per plate, which ranges around thirty to sixty dollars. The food served is Lobster, muscles, crab, seafood chowder, steak, chicken, and things like that. Lobster being a pricey option, you may be able to pull this off without including it if you need to lower the costs. 

A post shared by Scott Gregory Thomas (@grillinfools) on May 7, 2017 at 7:23pm PDT

Italiano Buffet

This is a fun buffet and a fan favorite for many people. It consists of different types of pasta and pizza, and breads. Price range wise it is on the cheaper side when comparing to things like a turkey or ham dinner. The only issue is that you won’t be able to cater to guests with gluten allergies or intolerances, so be sure to have something on the menu to make up for it. 

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Classic Buffet

Ranging around twelve to twenty dollars a plate, this buffet is frequently chosen because it contains classic food that people are used to. You have turkey or chicken, ham and roast beef, with vegetables and gravy, complimented with rolls.

While most of these buffets are commonly selected as wholes, you can also opt to mix and match with some of them. If you are the bride-to-be and you want to have lobster for breakfast, or spaghetti with your classic buffet, it’s completely your choice and keep in mind, most caterers can accommodate specific requests.