How to Keep Catering Needs Simple and Easy

February 19th, 2012

When you are wanting to work with Toronto caterers to provide food for your event, you’re going to have to resist the temptation to make things too complicated. If you feel like you need to impress your guests, then this can lead to a sort of unnecessary complication because you feel like more complicated food will be more likely to get the approval of your guests. In fact, simple food prepared very well is what will get the best reviews from your guests. In what follows, we’re going to present a series of rules that will help to keep you from falling into the trap of serving overcomplicated food. If you pay attention to each of these rules as you are preparing for an event, then you’ll be more likely to make your guests happy.

 

Rule #1: The more complicated the food, the more likely it is that catering companies make mistakes.

 

Mistakes happen to everyone, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, it’s important that you do everything you can to help the Toronto catering company of your choice make as few mistakes as possible. The primary source of mistakes when you’re dealing with event catering is when the food is more complicated than it needs to be for the occasion. This puts unnecessary pressure on the kitchen, and this pressure leads to an increased number of mistakes. Do your catering company a favor and create as friendly of a work environment as possible within reason. If you focus on serving simple food that is done well, then you will impress your guests with the consistency of the catering.

 

Rule #2: Impress your guests with quality food instead of flashy gimmicks.

 

As an event planner, your reputation is on the line when you hire one of the companies that are catering Toronto. While you want to make sure to impress your guests to some degree, you also have to remember the whole point of having catering for the event in the first place. You have hired a Toronto caterer service to provide good food to your guests, and the best way to impress your guests within the sort of dynamic that exists between you and the catering company is to choose a full service caterer that will serve quality food. Avoid the temptation to go with any company that tries to sell you on a gimmick designed to have your guests remember you. While they might remember you, that doesn’t mean that they will be impressed, and it doesn’t mean that they will think you did a good job of preparing for the event.

 

Rule #3: Go with a menu that makes sense for the occasion.

 

The easiest way to seem pretentious and really put off your guests is to offer a menu that isn’t called for due to the nature or location of the event. A clear example of this would be to offer a fine dining menu outdoors at a park, but don’t let the extreme nature of this example fool you because it’s an easier mistake to make than people think. One minute you’re choosing from a list of Toronto caterers, and the next minute you’re choosing a menu while you’re worried about impressing your guests. In the chaos of selecting a menu, it’s easy to become misguided. To avoid making this mistake, choose the concepts for your menu once you know the location of the event and what the event is for, and don’t wait until your first meetings with catering companies to start working on the menu.

Less is More With Minimalist Event Catering Options

January 30th, 2012

When it comes to planning events going into 2012, fewer people are going for events that use a full service caterer. Instead, many people planning events are going with Toronto catering companies that offer more minimal types of food options. Having a full dinner service isn’t the trendy thing anymore, and the times are changing. When you go with a minimalist approach to catering, you create a much more social atmosphere. On top of that, you usually save money when compared to a regular dinner service. Your guests will love a minimalist catering service.

 

One traditional option for finger food is small sandwiches. However, just because this is a traditional choice doesn’t mean that it has to be boring. Instead of going with Toronto caterers that will simply throw together regular old sandwiches, keep in mind that you have a lot of flexibility in terms of what you want to put on your sandwiches. If you really want to stand out, one approach is to use less typical meats like venison or bacon. These meats are tasty and will bring a fresh feeling to the food at your event. On top of the novelty factor, you’ll also find that it’s very easy to keep things from becoming messy with small, hand-held sandwiches.

 

If you’re the kind of person who really likes your meat, then you might shy away from minimalist options because of the lack of a good piece of meat to work with as the center of a meal. People with this point of view should consider offering miniature kabobs that have a lot more flavor than most finger foods and that are also much more original. While miniature kabobs might cost a little more than many other types of minimalist foods, most of the companies catering Toronto will be able to put together some kabobs that your guests will absolutely love. These are great for dipping in various sauces, and you can also provide vegetable-only kabobs if you need a vegetarian option.

 

Sometimes you don’t want meat to be the center of a minimalist catering service. In those cases, you’ll still want to pack the food full of flavor with a nice array of fruits and vegetables. Small pieces of fruit or vegetables dipped in sauce is a traditional type of finger food that is extremely inexpensive. What’s great about this option is that the Toronto catering company of your choice can serve up a lot of different options that will appeal to different people. For a creative twist, you can offer a number of less common fruits in a cup with a small toothpick that your guests will use to eat with.

 

When it comes to dessert, most companies that are catering Toronto will have a certain type of cupcake that they specialize in. Custom cupcakes are extremely popular right now and they work great in a minimalist setting. You can get cupcakes in almost any type of flavor, so pick something that is appropriate for the event. However, it’s best if you offer at least two different flavors so that you can appeal to a larger number of your guests without making anyone feel left out.

 

Besides cupcakes, another great minimalist dessert option is miniature milkshakes. Many smaller chain restaurants have been cranking out specialty milkshakes for a while, Toronto catering businesses are catching up with the trend by providing their own miniature versions. These desserts are colorful and tasty, and they will get you a lot of props as an excellent event planner. Just remember that you should serve these milkshakes with a straw or a spoon depending on whether the event will be informal or formal, respectively.

How to Prepare for an Event With Catering

January 4th, 2012

It can be a little scary to plan an event since all of your guests will be counting on you for a time that they can enjoy. When you throw event catering into the mix, things can jump from being a little scary to extremely scary if you aren’t familiar with how Toronto caterers work. Many people need help planning events if they aren’t used to the pressure, and that’s very understandable. There are so many things to prepare for at an event like this that it’s easy to forget things. Here we’re going to walk you through some steps that you can follow to make planning and preparing for your event much less stressful.

The first thing that you need to do is to create a list of things that need to get done for the event. This could include deciding which Toronto catering companies to hire, doing a taste-testing of the food that will be served, setting up seating and so on. Airplane pilots keep a checklist of everything they have to do before a flight so that they never miss anything, and you should learn from their example. If you keep your list with you at all times during the planning process, then you’ll be able to jot down ideas and keep up with your progress as well.

Once you have your list of things that you need to get done, then you’ll also want to get an approximate list of guests that will be coming to the event. In a perfect world, you would have a list of all of the individual guests with no unexpected people ever showing up, but that’s usually wishful thinking. If you have a rough list of people to work with, then you can work with companies that are catering Toronto to create a flexible enough situation to feed everyone who shows up to your event without wasting a bunch of food. Having a list of the guests will also allow you to arrange your seating for the event in a more effective way.

When you’re talking with catering companies from Toronto, you’ll need to keep in mind the demographic that you’ll be serving and the context of the event. There are Toronto catering companies available for almost any kind of occasion, and it’s up to you as the event planner to pick an appropriate one. This should be done well in advance so that you can match the rest of the event’s theme to the food choices.

Once the event begins, it’s tempting to fall into a more relaxed mood since you might feel like your job as the planner is over. However, this is far from the truth. After you’ve got your Toronto caterers set up and everything is running, then you’ve got to supervise everything and make sure that the event goes off like it’s supposed to. Forget the perfect fantasy scenario where everything goes as planned and there aren’t any unexpected problems. Instead, embrace the fact that your job at the actual event is to head off any problems that do come up so that they don’t turn into full-fledged disasters.

After the event finishes and your Toronto caterer service is packing up, you should take the time to collect feedback from both your guests and the staff of the full service caterer that you hired. The idea here is to figure out as much as you can about how the event went and what mistakes you might have made as the planner. In the future, you’ll be able to use this feedback to prepare more effectively for other events that you are in charge of.