When I first set up my business twelve years ago, I knew I had no idea what I was doing financially, had no business experience, accountancy, HR, or even professional event catering experience. If you read any of my posts and are starting to formulate an opinion about me including the phrase ‘winging it, or worse, then you’d be not far off the mark.
I did, however, know about cheffing, having been one for over ten years in all types of kitchens in numerous countries. I figured that the hiring, training, and logistics of my kitchen brigade would be easy. Just hire the best chefs I knew, had worked with, or could find, and let them take care of the rest right?!
Yeah, not so much…
I failed to realise the enormous difference between restaurant chefs and event caterers.
Most restaurant chefs, as talented and creative as they are, love the feeling of knowing the menu will be the same every day, knowing their kitchen inside out, where the ‘sweet spot’ is in their oven, where the salt is etc. They can use these known variables to create and deliver the best food possible with confidence in a high-pressure environment.
For event caterers, those known variables are a fraction of the size!
If I’m being totally honest, because of the nature of what we do, there are massive limitations in the kind of food we can serve because we have to transport all the ingredients up to 100 miles, and often build a kitchen with limited access to power, gas and water supply (which means bringing our own bottled water to cook with/clean with etc!)
We still have to deliver every meal we do, on time, to up to 300 discerning guests (for two of them, this is possibly the most important and significant meal of their lives) so no pressure!
This means we have to play to our strengths, use some clever tricks and strategies, and never promise our clients anything we aren’t 100% sure we can deliver perfectly, no matter the weather conditions or any other factors!
In our training, the importance of ‘mise en place’ is drummed into us- the ability to prepare and have ready, absolutely everything we need in advance, and have it to hand to ensure that service goes flawlessly- The one thing catering chefs have is prep time: We have several days to do the preparatory work for each event, and so things like three day smoking of meat, making beautifully enriched stocks and sauces, dehydrating, curing, or other elaborate cooking techniques are no problem at all! In our enormous prep kitchen, our chefs spend the whole week putting in the groundwork for the event they will be doing that Saturday (match day!)
There are dishes that you will see on every restaurant menu in the country, that you will never see on a wedding menu: sorbet (or anything frozen for that matter), steaks cooked to the diner’s request etc.
Our chefs here are also expert van drivers, electricians, kitchen layout designers, and problem solvers. They sometimes have to carry ovens across fields, jump behind the bar and make a cocktail, and help the odd drunken wedding guest get back home- all after a 16-hour shift!
So, as I quickly found out, there is a vast chasm between the restaurant kitchen and the catering tent! It’s not for everyone, but those who thrive under the pressure of the unknown and embrace the chaos really are rock stars, and deserve a thought next time you’re sat on table 10 doing shots of tequila in between courses!