When you’re planning a big celebration, it often seems like there’s not too much to celebrate. Planning big events can be a really big hassle, and full of decisions that you aren’t really equipped to make. With six choices of venue and eight potential photographers, the amount of decisions that go into planning your wedding or your child’s bar mitzvah can be truly overwhelming. One of the most fundamental decisions is about food. Do you have the venue prepare the food, do you get a caterer, or do you try to heap it all on and make the food yourself. If you do decide to go with a caterer, then you just have another decision on your hands: which one. Here are some tips to help you pick the right caterer.
Budget
Before you can even begin looking at caterers, you need to hammer down your own budget. Figure out how much you are willing to spend on food, and make sure to think of all of the factors. Once you know how high you are willing to go, and where you want to start, then you can begin looking at different caterers.
Read Reviews
Every catering company at this point has a presence online, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find them on multiple review sites, like Yelp. Don’t necessarily go to a company’s own website for reviews, as they wouldn’t post any negative ones.
Word of Mouth
You have friends and family who have thrown big parties for sure; use them. Many of them have probably catered events as well, so ask them who they had as their caterer, and how the experience was. Since caterers work locally, ask locally; you wouldn’t want to call Grandma Lois in Oregon to find a good Hewlett catering company.
Talk to Multiple Caterers
In order to make an educated choice, you need to have options. Make sure you discuss the event with multiple caterers, so you can judge which one had the best plan, most effective costs, and whom you got along with best.
Go to Tastings
Most caterers will hold tasting events to allow potential customers to get an idea of how their food is. If you’ve got your list narrowed down to a couple choices, then attend tasting events to find out if you love one particular one, or just to eliminate the ones you don’t.
Only once you’ve gone through the whole list and really considered every step, should you settle on which caterer you want to use. Bad food can spoil an otherwise festive affair, and what you really want is guests remembering how amazing your celebration feast was for years to come.
