Getting the Scoop on Caterers

When choosing a caterer for your wedding, there are some pertinent questions that you must ask, whether your reception venue has exclusive catering rights or you find a stand alone service provider. The food and its presentation at your event is important. How the caterer treats you and your guests is important. What types of service they provide and how they deal with unexpected changes is important. Catering is a large chuck of your budget, so choosing carefully is being smart with your wedding dollars.

Here are some things to watch out for:

1. Does the caterer bring their own tables and linens? If not, then they need to communicate that with you. Asking for those items when they get to the venue when it was not communicated before hand is never good.
2. Does the caterer bring enough staff to work the room so that guests are not constantly asking to have their water glasses filled or that plates are taken away in a timely manner? Of course the opposite can be true; are the staff so over zealous that they take napkins from guest's laps? - yes, this actually happened at a recent wedding!
3. Does the caterer serve the head table? If not, then you should rethink their services. You are, after all, paying them, so serving the head table should be an automatic "yes!" This small act shows what a caring company they are, willing to go the extra step and want to genuinely give you a perfect day. Sadly, there are some caterers that refuse to provide this service.
4. When asked to do any changes at the last minute (within reason), does the caterer try to work with you, or do they ignore your requests? Not being able to reach your caterer two days before your event is never a good sign.
5. Does your caterer return your phone calls and e-mails in timely manner? If they use the excuse that they are busy, then that can get old very quickly. We are all busy. Communication is very, very important!

Many of these issues happened recently at weddings that we have helped with. One caterer refused to serve the head table. The table only had 12 people at the tables, but still, they said that they had not been asked to do this, so no, they weren't serving them. What???? This is a wedding! Serving 12 people would have taken 12 minutes (I know because I did it!). It would have made them look great, but instead, they decided to stand off to one side and watch while I frantically filled 12 plates of food from the buffet line before the lines got too long. This is service?

Another caterer refused to work with us on a timeline. She indicated that she did not have enough staff and if she did bring in more, it would cost the client over $300 for the 45 minutes; this was in addition to the food charges and service tax charges already charged to the couple. My staff picked up the slack and got the tables set within 41 minutes. The thing that really got to the bride and her family was that the staff that the caterer had hired, sat down on the steps and watched us for practically the entire time. They could have helped, were on the clock already, but did not because the caterer was out to prove - what?

If it sounds like I have sour grapes, I readily agree. What really bites is that these are very special days that we are talking about--Weddings. A lot of money exchanges hands and time lines are crucial to make sure that everything gets done when it should. Brides and Grooms and their guests and counting on their providers to make sure that the day runs smoothly; this is why their service is so important to the overall success of the day. I cannot stress this enough; interview your vendors carefully, ask for referrals, talk to people who work behind the scenes to see how things really get done, get things down in writing and make sure the contract is iron clad.

Every wedding is a potential future client. If you want the reputation as a service provider that delivers, then you need to do the due diligence to prove this. If you don't think that people will notice, think again. They do - I promise!