When planning your next event, there are many considerations to assess in deciding the type of catering that will work best for you.
Type of occasion, number of guests and budget is the deciding triangle. Some types of catering we will be touching on will be corporate, wedding, social events, food truck, concession, and restaurant style. How hands-on you want to be in your event is also a key in which you end up picking up.
Corporate Catering
Corporate catering events are idea for work settings. Many organizations small and large use this model and can range from work casual to business formal. A summer-BBQ or Halloween party at work will call for a more casual celebratory type of catering vs a client lunch or a Lunch & Learn workshop.
Finger foods, cold-buffet style and mass quantity beverages (coffee, tea, bottle water), and disposable plates and cutlery can be very budget friendly. Clean-up is also a breeze on the support staff.
The more formal venues for a corporate setting may have you opting for an open bar depending on your budget, plated full service in formal holiday parties. You would need some flexibility with budget if you are planned to hold such events outside your company office in a hotel or venue conference room with total hand-off involvement on the part of your staff.
Wedding Catering
Wedding catering has a more fun approach with different specialties offered by different catering companies who may be open to go the extra mile in order to gain your business.
This type of catering is for small to large events and budget can easily go up if the number of your guests unexpectedly rise and the type of food you opted for requires skill and use of high quality ingredients and quality beverages and more professional full service.
Many of our clients who plan wedding opt for hot buffet style because it can strike balance of getting high quality food without going over budget.
Social Events Catering
Social events catering is ideal for very specific events or milestones. They are usually themed such as birthdays and anniversaries, baby shower or retirement parties. This type of catering is ideal when you plan for more precision and little room for error. Being able to control specific menu items and allergy awareness level for the food served is a strong positive for this kind of catering.
Food Truck Catering
Food truck catering is great for outdoor events such as a big open-house, grand opening, fund-raising. You can have one or more food trucks serving on site depending on expected turn-out.
They can be affordable too and a bit faster as well as depending what type of food is needed with an amazing variety of dishes coming out from different providers. This can be a casual somewhat relaxed type of catering that can be an easy clean up again with guests throwing away their garbage when they’re finished.
Concession Catering
Concession catering is for very large events. It can be seen as a fast food type pace for events where you are doing crowd favourites and is quicker to serve a lot of people in one go. An example could be a sporting or out-door company organized pic-nic events where hot dogs, burgers, fries, and nachos are quick foods to serve a large group.
Restaurant Catering
Restaurant Catering is good for events that may already be in a hotel venue setting. There is no clean-up required from you. Restaurant may offer packages with discounts for choosing their services. This is a very specific type of cuisine. There may be fewer types of options for your guests but, uniformity is more of a guarantee. And restaurants are usually good at what they do. There is also a higher level of quality control.
This type of catering also lends itself to buffet style where restaurant staff serve food from chafers as your guests hold plates to fill up with their favourite food items. Buffet style can also be less expensive if your guests can serve themselves without any restaurant staff help saving you un-necessary cost while still enjoying quality of a specialty restaurant.
Zesty Catering Services
Zesty offers value-driven catering services Burlington, Oakville, Halton region and across Greater Toronto Area. Whether you’re planning a cozy event with friends and family in the comfort of your home, or inviting a large group of guests at a venue, Zesty will deliver on that promise.
We make the catering process easy on you. It all starts with the type of experience you would like to create and your budget. We work with you to ensure that we balance the occasion you are celebrating, the experience you would like to create and the budget you have in mind. We balance all to deliver the best return on your time and money.
We offer sampling of our menu before you decide. We are and remain extremely responsive and accessible throughout the catering process.
