Father’s Day Catering: Hog Roast Or Buffet

Mid-June, and the weather is usually on your side

Father’s Day falls on the third Sunday in June, which is about as good as the odds get for an event that wants to be outside. That makes it one of the few family occasions where cooking on site is a realistic choice.

So the question is genuinely open, and it comes down to numbers.

The hog roast case

From £7.25 a head. Carved as guests come, which means the food is the event: people gather round it, go back for seconds, and it runs for an hour.

What it needs:

• 50 guests minimum, or the equivalent booking value.
• About 3m by 5m of flat ground with no steps to the serving area.
• Outdoors as standard. Tell us in advance if it needs to be indoors.
• We arrive an hour before your service time. Service runs an hour, and we say so before it ends so people can go back.
• 25% deposit to secure the date, balance due 30 days before.

For a big family gathering, a milestone, or a shared thing between two or three families, this is the better party by a distance.

The buffet case

From £5.50 a head, delivered and set out, no minimum beyond £20 on the order value.

• Buffet 1 at £5.50, sandwiches, eight fillings.
• Buffet 5 at £7.70 with savouries.
• Buffet 8 at £9.40, or Buffet 9 at £11.00 for the full spread with crisps, fruit, cake and juice.

It goes ahead whatever the weather does, it works for eight people as happily as eighty, and it needs no space, no deposit and no plan B.

Choosing between them

Under fifty people: buffet. The hog roast minimum decides it, and there is no sense forcing the number up to reach it.

Over fifty, with somewhere to set up: hog roast. This is what it is for.

Over fifty, no outdoor space: buffet, or ring us, barbecue catering at £13.00 a head has the same 50-guest minimum and space requirement, so it does not solve the space problem, but there are other options worth talking through.

The rest of the table

Whichever way you go, a few things earn their place at a June gathering:

• Salads, your way, £7.75: built to what you actually want.
• Fresh fruit platter, £13.80.
• Cheese selection, charcuterie or a ploughman’s platter, £16.50 each.
• Cans of pop £1.35, bottled water £1.35, fruit juice £2.75 a litre.

Every buffet is 30% vegetarian as standard and vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal portions are prepared separately and labelled. That matters more for a hog roast than for anything else on our list, and it is prepared and labelled properly.

Booking

June Sundays go early, and Father’s Day is the busiest of them. For anything cooked on site, have it booked by 1 April. The deposit holds the date and the balance is not due until 30 days before.

For a delivered buffet the lead time is 4pm the day before and delivery is free, but the same advice applies in spirit: deciding it in April is how it ends up being the day somebody planned.