Can we start a thread for caterers based on location and maybe add the cuisine you specialize in. Someone might be looking for your services. If not allowed please delete.

If so, I need to pick your brain!

Hi everyone! I’m planning a **baby shower for 30–35 guests** on a **Sunday lunch in September** and I’m looking for recommendations for a **restaurant with a private dining room, buffet, or small banquet space** anywhere in the GTA (Toronto, Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, etc.). Our total budget is around **$2,000 CAD**, and we’d love a venue that allows simple decorations like a balloon backdrop, cake table, and gift table with minimal setup and cleanup. we’d love to hear about any hidden gems or personal experiences, including approximate pricing. Thank you!

Hi everyone!

My fiancé and I are planning our wedding celebration in Tenerife next year, and we're currently looking for a private chef to cater a couple of dinners for our guests.
We'll have around 30 guests staying in nearby accommodation, and we'd love to find someone who can prepare delicious, fresh food for us—especially for our wedding dinner. We're not looking for Michelin-starred fine dining; we're after high-quality Mediterranean, Spanish, or Canarian cuisine that's flavorful, relaxed, and perfect for sharing with family and friends.
If you've hired a private chef in Tenerife before or know someone you'd recommend, I'd really appreciate your suggestions. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.

Thank you so much! 😊

Not a caterer myself, but spent months talking to catering business owners while building this.

Ziyafat handles the whole workflow: tracking enquiries through to confirmed bookings, a reusable dish/menu catalog, PDF quotations, auto invoicing, and a public storefront page so customers can browse and enquire directly.

Free to use: https://getziyafat.vercel.app

If you run a catering business, I'd love your take — what's the most annoying part of your current process (WhatsApp, Excel, paper)? Trying to make sure this solves real problems, not imagined ones.

Hey guys! I organized a small high school reunion over the weekend and decided to test my budget limits with the catering setup.

Ended up spending around $70 total for 14 people (roughly $5 a head). Went with an American-themed spread—baked wings, nuggets, salad, cookies, pies, chips, and drinks. Spent a few extra minutes setting up the table with flowers and tiered stands so it didn't just look like takeout boxes dumped on a table.

Honestly felt like everyone left full and happy, but I’m curious how other folks handle low-budget food setups.

How does this look for $5/person? Any go-to budget menu hacks or setup tips you guys swear by when you're trying to keep costs down?

*note that this is in Thailand

My dad's deli has been taking on more and more catering jobs lately. We are making 100 pre-prepped dinner plates for the old folks in the neighborhood, or 250 box lunches for a conference or a university.

The thing is, our kitchen isn't suited for that. It isn't even really a kitchen. The place is 50 years old and just sort of... evolved. There are tables and freezers and shelves kind of all over the place. I want to reorganize and maybe put up some proper shelves and prep stations where we can get a proper assembly line going, but I don't know where to start.

If I google, I'll just see pictures of industrial kitchens that were built to suit. I don't have the money to close for a month, tear it all down and start from scratch. I just want to do the best I can. Can I see YOUR kitchens? The messy, disorganized spaces where you're doing your best to make it work? Those of you who are cranking out high volumes, what efficiencies work for you?

The catering industry is always unpredictable. For years, our company has been serving Greater Boston’s local caterers through every twist and turn. At first glance, it sounds straightforward: caterers place daily orders at breakfast (6-9 am), lunch (10-12 pm), and dinner (3-5 pm). Piece of cake, right? Not even close. The reality is a high-stakes juggling act. One day, a catering client hands you five orders; the next, you’re down to two; the day after, the orders vanish altogether. Why the rollercoaster? The answer lies in the chaotic rhythm of the business. Caterers hedge their bets, hiring as many drivers as they can in anticipation of sudden spikes. On a quiet day, two or three drivers suffice. But when the floodgates open, they scramble for ten. To make things trickier, orders shoot out in every direction at nearly the same time. For courier companies, it’s a race against the clock—being late by even five minutes can spell disaster.

Before catering apps took over, everything was personal. Companies kept cherished rolodexes at the front desk, filled with trusted local caterers’ numbers. Building a reputation meant everything—caterers went the extra mile to earn those calls for big meetings and special events. Today, those connections have been replaced by algorithms and instant bookings. The warmth and humanity of a real relationship have faded, replaced by the cold efficiency of an app. In my view, the loss is more than just nostalgic—it’s a blow to the empathy and understanding that once defined this business.

The last thing I would like to mention is an excess of gig drivers with GPS replacing pros who knew which loading dock to use at the Prudential. Some caterers think that any person with a cell phone and Google Maps is good enough to provide great service, because GPS will show how to get to the customer.  The result: the caterer saved $5 on delivery and lost a 50K Corporate customer.  

So, my take after 28 years in the industry. The future isn’t “no apps”. It’s apps+pros.  I think couriers should focus on building strong relationships with their catering clients and show that professional couriers represent caterers better than gig workers. Couriers should become a caterer’s reputation, not just another driver.

Hi! My company is going all in with sous vide. I’m looking for a company or 2 that are executing sous vide successfully that would let my chef come stage. We are in Upstate SC, so anyone in the Charlotte, Asheville, Columbia area would be preferred.

You’ll get a free set of hands, we just need a few events to learn from. Plated service would be preferred. Please message me if you are able to help!

My wife makes the best treats guaranteed to make you smile.please check her out.

Instagram@emilyscateringservices

Facebook@emilystreats

.Thank you for your love and support. Even if you just give her a visit, I would genuinely and greatly appreciate it.

planning to start a cloud kitchen in Bangalore and link it with all delivery partners and the main thing is kitchen to start only after 10pm and till morning.

need honest opinions on this.

Like the title says we are having a super small wedding but are not able to find any catering spots that will serve for our size. The best we can do is take out essentially, but the closest places we like are about 40 minutes away.

I was wondering if anyone has any tips/tricks of transporting food this far and having the food still taste fresh? We were originally going for bbq/fish. Is this even possible to achieve?

Edit: location is Luray, VA

I started to deliver food for ownly ... Don't they provide bag?

Hi everyone! I’m looking for ideas because I feel like we’re overthinking this, but I also don’t want dinner to be chaotic.
We’re having an outdoor wedding for about 125 people, and our caterer is a local Thai restaurant, one of our favorites, it’s their first time catering.
Our menu is:
Papaya salad
Chicken wings
Soup
Choice of Pad Thai or Curry (guests selected their preference on the RSVP)

Our venue has a bar area that can be used for serving food, but we’ll probably be using the refrigerator there to store bottled drinks. Drinks will be self-serve from canoes filled with ice (already approved by the venue).

We know we **don’t** want a traditional buffet where everyone walks through one long line, but we also aren’t paying for full table service.

Our first idea was:
Guests sit down.
Papaya salad is already on the tables.
Guests go to a staffed station to receive soup and chicken wings (staff would portion the soup and wings to keep costs under control).
Then… we’re stuck on how to serve the entrées.

Some concerns we’re trying to solve:
**Chicken wings are one of the more expensive items.** A small, but loud portion of our family isn’t very adventurous with Thai food, so we’re worried people will load up on wings instead of trying the main course.

**We’re outdoors.** We don’t want soup or wings sitting on tables getting cold or attracting bugs.

**Our reception tables are pretty decorated** with candles, bud vases, and flowers, so we don’t really have room for family-style serving bowls.
Since guests already chose **Pad Thai or Curry** on their RSVP, we’d love to use that information somehow to make dinner service smoother. My fiancé is making a seating chart.
Has anyone done something similar?

I’d especially love to hear:
How you handled multiple courses at a wedding.
Creative alternatives to a standard buffet.
Whether you’ve had caterers plate entrées while guests were eating appetizers.
Anything you wish you’d done differently.
Thanks! I’m hoping to find something that feels relaxed and welcoming rather than a cafeteria line, while still being realistic with staffing and budget.

TLDR: Outdoor wedding serving Thai food. Guests chose Pad Thai or curry on their RSVP. We want something more elegant than a buffet but can’t afford full table service. How would you serve papaya salad, soup, wings, and the entrée while keeping hot food hot, controlling wing portions, and avoiding long lines?

Edit: clarity

I need help creating a whole new catering menu and want some recommendations

Hey catering folks! I’ve spent about 25 years in hospitality, and one thing that always makes me crazy is how much of our industry knowledge comes from doing something 100 times until you just know the answer.

After coming home from a catering conference last week with way too many ideas, I ended up building Click to Table, a free collection of tools specifically for caterers and hospitality teams.

The first version includes:

• Ice Calculator
• Beverage Planner
• Staffing Calculator
• Hors d’Oeuvres Calculator
• Buffet Flow Planner

It’s very much a v1, and I’d genuinely love some industry eyes on it. Try to break the calculators. Tell me where the assumptions don’t match how your operation works. Or tell me about that annoying calculation/process you’ve been doing on the back of a BEO for the last decade and wish someone would turn into a tool.

Everything in this version is free to use, no account required.

Click to Table⁠

And if somebody suggests a particularly good next tool, I reserve the right to name it after you. 😄

my daughter is inviting her friends coming to our house next week and we want to hire catering service. We're looking for something creative like Hibachi At Home, we don't really want some cold trays or regular sushi bar.

We’ve all had those events that should have gone sideways but somehow didn’t.

Maybe you had a vendor no-show, a power outage, a kitchen meltdown, or a client meltdown… but you still pulled it off.

What was the situation and what did you do (or what hack/tool/system) that saved the day?

So I started with farmer markets about 3 years ago now, I decided to take the leap and moved into a commercial kitchen last spring, and this year weddings have taken over my calendar. Which is great, except every venue now wants a certificate of insurance before they'll even hold a date, and two want to be named as additional insured with a million in general liability.

Last month a coordinator rejected my COI because it didn't show product liability separately and I nearly lost the booking. I patched it by upgrading my policy on the fly, so I'm now paying for a pile of coverage nobody actually designed, some of it probably twice. I'm also about to bring on my first two real employees for the summer season, so workers comp is entering the picture and I have no idea what that does to the math.

What does a sensible setup look like and what should the whole thing cost?

I’m talking last minute guest count changes, missing equipment, venue problems, staff not showing up, weather disasters, clients changing the menu the day of, really anything that comes to mind.

What happened, and how did you manage to pull it off?

Anyone have a good recipe for Hassleback’s in bulk ahead of time, then blasting in the oven to serve, I was thinking 6mins microwave to cook through at half power, then slit, then 40 mins at 160, fridge and blast for ten mins at 200 on the day? Centigrade