Burns Night Catering: What The Evening Actually Needs

An occasion with a running order

Burns Night is 25 January, and unlike most winter events it comes with a script. There is a piping in, an address to the haggis, a supper, an immortal memory, and toasts. The food has to fit around a running order rather than the other way round, and that changes what works.

Two things follow from it. The meal happens at a fixed point in the evening, not whenever people drift over. And there is a gap either side (before the formal part starts, and after the speeches finish) which is where most of the actual eating gets done.

The honest answer on haggis

We do not make a haggis supper. It is not on our menu, there is no price for it, and we are not going to invent one to catch a search.

What we would say is this: for a traditional supper, the haggis, neeps and tatties are best sourced from a butcher who does them properly, and there are several in Nottingham and Derby who do. That part of the night is small, specific and worth getting right at source.

Where we come in is everything around it, which for a room of forty is most of the food by volume.

What we can do for the room

Before the formal part. People arrive, there are drinks, and the speeches have not started. This is where savouries earn their place, Savouries at £3.35 a head gives three pieces per person of sausage rolls, pork pies, quiche and pinwheels. Substantial enough to matter, small enough not to spoil the supper.

Around the supper itself. A hot buffet works where there is a service point and a room that will sit down. Hot buffets start at £23.50 a head, which is a different order of event from a delivered cold buffet and is quoted as one.

After the toasts. The long tail of the evening. Homemade cakes at £2.25 a head, a cheese selection at £16.50, cheese after a Burns supper is entirely at home, or a ploughman’s platter at £16.50.

For a club or society night

Most Burns Nights we are asked about are not private dinners; they are club, society or workplace evenings for thirty to eighty people in a hired room. For those, the practical answer is usually a cold buffet for the room plus whatever the organiser has arranged for the haggis itself.

• Buffet 5 at £7.70 a head, sandwiches and savouries.
• Buffet 8 at £9.40 for something more substantial.
• Buffet 9 at £11.00 for the full spread.

Every buffet is 30% vegetarian as standard, with vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal portions prepared separately and labelled, which matters on a night whose traditional centrepiece suits neither vegetarians nor several other diets.

Timing and booking

25 January falls in a quiet stretch for catering, which means availability is usually good and lead times are comfortable. Order by 4pm the day before as normal, delivery is free, and the £20 minimum applies.

If it is a seated hot buffet rather than a delivered cold one, ring earlier: that is an event booking with a service time, not a drop-off, and January dates for those go sooner than people expect.

What we will ask

The date and the venue, roughly how many, what time the supper is called for, whether there is a kitchen or a hatch, and how many of each dietary requirement. Tell us the running order too. Knowing when the speeches start tells us when the food should land, and on this particular night that is the whole job.