Midweek Hog Roasts: The Same Food For Less Trouble

Saturdays are the bottleneck, not the food

Every caterer, marquee company, photographer and venue in the region is competing for the same fifty-two Saturdays. Move the same event to a Tuesday and almost every constraint disappears at once.

The food does not change. The price does not change. A hog roast is £7.25 a head whichever day it is. What changes is how easy it is to actually make happen.

What a midweek date gets you

Availability, at short notice. A summer Saturday needs booking months ahead. A midweek date in the same month is frequently possible, and sometimes possible in the same fortnight.

A calmer setup. Roads are quieter, venues are emptier, and there is no wedding finishing in the room before yours. The van arrives when it says it will, which in July on a Saturday is a genuine variable.

Your pick of the staff. The people who cook at weekends are the people who cook midweek, but midweek they are not doing three events in two days.

What midweek actually suits

Corporate. This is the obvious one and the biggest use. A staff summer party, a milestone, a supplier day, a factory shutdown lunch. Nobody expects a work event on a Saturday, and holding it in work time is usually the point.

Retirement and long-service dos. These follow the working week by definition, and a hog roast turns what would have been sandwiches in the canteen into something people remember.

Clubs and associations. Most meet on a weeknight already. The event moves to the food rather than the other way round.

Anything with a big travelled-in family. If people are taking days off anyway, a Wednesday costs them nothing extra and the venue costs you considerably less.

The practical side

Same as any hog roast, and worth knowing before you commit:

• Fifty guests minimum, or the equivalent booking value.
• About 3m by 5m of flat ground with no steps to the serving area.
• Outdoors as standard. Say in advance if it needs to be inside.
• We arrive an hour before service. Service runs an hour, and we say when it is ending so people can go back for seconds.
• 25% deposit to hold the date, balance due thirty days before.

Under fifty people, a delivered buffet from £5.50 a head is the better answer and we will tell you so rather than talk you into the minimum.

Dietary requirements

Prepared separately and labelled: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal. That matters more at a hog roast than at anything else on our list and it is planned in rather than added at the side.

Tell us the date, the site and roughly how many. If it is midweek, the answer is usually yes.