In events catering, anything can happen. Outside of the comfort of the controlled kitchen environment, there are a myriad of logistical challenges that must be taken into account.
Add in expensive catering vehicles, waiting staff overtime and last-minute guest number increases and it could be a disaster waiting to happen in the wrong hands.
But, done carefully, it can be a highly profitable string to your F&B bow. “It takes a wise head to make profit out of something so labour-intensive,” says Steven Pieters, executive chef, Kempinski hotel, Ajman.
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Meals for the masses
While events come in all shapes and sizes, it is the large-scale events which can net the highest profits. This brings the inevitable challenges of mass catering.
“You must strictly adhere to health and safety rules for large-scale catering,” says executive chef, Al Bustan Rotana Dubai, Christophe Prud’homme. “And you need to plan further in advance as logistics and intense scheduling are involved.”
Contracted employees brought in to manage guest numbers can pose a challenge for ensuring quality consistency and service standards, points out Uwe Micheel, director of kitchens at the Radisson Hotel Blu Dubai Deira Creek and president of the Emirates Culinary Guild.
“You also need to take into account that everyone’s tastes are slightly different,” says Kevin Little, executive chef of Desert Palm hotel in Dubai.
“You have to consider the right food to use in order to keep the most people happy; the same curry on a buffet could have people in tears because it is so inedibly hot, or up in arms because there’s no heat in it at all.”
Little prefers live cooking stations to buffets because of this: “Personally I hate chafing dishes and will avoid using them. Live cooking is as quick as a buffet but has that interaction and entertainment side of things. It’s much better for the client and the product quality is much higher.”
While this option is more complicated to arrange and serve, Little believes that it is far preferable to other ways of mass catering: “Obviously you need to think about the right sort of dishes to do and there is no point in trying to do a dish that will take 20 minutes to cook each portion.
But I’ve done events for 1000 people using live cooking stations instead of a buffet and not had anybody waiting around for their food.
Whereas if you have a buffet people always queue wherever it looks most popular — you can stand there with a day-glo vest on and try to direct the traffic but people will always go where there are other people waiting, no matter how much you tell them that the buffet is the same on the other side.”
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