Choosing An Event Caterer In Nottingham

Most catering choices are made on the wrong things

People compare caterers on the menu and the price per head. Those are the two easiest things to compare and the two least likely to go wrong. What goes wrong is arriving late, getting the numbers wrong, and handling a dietary requirement badly.

So here is what to ask instead.

Ask for a price you can see before you ring

A caterer who publishes prices has decided what things cost and will charge you that. A caterer who quotes on request is deciding what to charge you after they know who you are and what the occasion is, and weddings famously cost more than the same food on a Tuesday.

Ours are published: buffets from £5.50 a head, hog roast from £7.25, barbecue at £13.00, canapés at £9.80 for three. You can budget the whole event before speaking to anybody.

Ask what happens with dietary requirements

The answer to listen for is how rather than yes. Prepared separately, or picked off a shared platter? Labelled, or pointed at? At extra cost, or not?

Every buffet we deliver is 30% vegetarian as standard, before anybody asks. Vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal portions are prepared separately and labelled. If a caterer treats these as an add-on, that tells you where they sit in the order of priorities.

Ask when they need final numbers

Too early and you are guessing, and paying for guests who never existed. Ours is seven days for an event and 4pm the day before for a delivered buffet.

Ask what happens afterwards

An underrated question. Somebody has to deal with the platters, the cool boxes and the rubbish, and at the end of an event that somebody is usually you. Our driver collects the next working day.

Ask whether they have done your venue

Not as a credential, as logistics. Where the van stops, whether there is a lift, what time the doors open. A caterer who asks you these questions before you ask them is one who has been caught out before and learned from it.

What we would say honestly

We are a delivered-buffet business first. Six thousand events a year, and the overwhelming majority are somebody’s ordinary Wednesday rather than anybody’s big day, office lunches, wakes at two days’ notice, christenings at a church hall.

If you want a plated three-course wedding breakfast with silver service, that is a different kind of catering from what we do best. Ring and we will talk it through properly. If you want a hundred people fed well, on time, at a published price, that is the thing we do most.

More on the Nottingham page, and the reviews are real ones from named customers rather than a selection.