How to Choose your Perfect Caterer for your Minneapolis Wedding.
When couples are planning their wedding, we try to get a sense of their top 3 must haves to make their day perfect, food is typically in the top 3, and every couple has a different idea of what comes to mind when they talk about the food they want to serve at their wedding!
Image Shane Long Photography
Food is what brings the room of people you love together, there is nothing better than sharing a meal with your loved ones! This blog is going to really focus on catering at The Sinclair, what works best, what to think about when finding your caterer, and more!
The Sinclair has a very relaxed catering policy, in that, they just need to be licensed and insured, giving couples that book with us, a ton of flexibility to truly give their guests the food experience they envision! So today we are going to chat a bit about catering and how to choose the best caterer for you!
Firstly, you want to think about the style of catering, there is a few styles of catering to consider when you are planning, each caterer offers a different level of service, and that doesn’t make one better than the other, it just depends on what you are looking for as a couple.
Full Service caterers offer everything you will need to have a fantastic event, they will have the linens, glassware, china, serving staff, they will have the options to do plated, buffet, and stations.
There are caterers that are full service, but only offer buffet style catering.
There are caterers that do buffets, most of the time these caterers will come with disposable plates and cutlery, they usually will not have linens, but they will have the staff to clear tables, and run the buffet.
Food Trucks (which we also mention down below) usually will come with compostable wares, although we do have a few food trucks that offer full service options as well.
Determine your budget, and start researching caterers to figure out what their food minimums are.
Most catering companies will have a food minimum, this is the minimum amount they charge to come out for an event. Typically, we will tell our couples to not go off of the food minimum, but to look at menu prices and have them give you a quote with your max possible guest count, that way, you can see the overall price per person after you add in menu items, tax, service charge, staffing fees, and any other fees they may have.
2. Decide the style of food you want to serve. Below are some of our favorite styles, and how we thing they work at the space!
Brynn Wheatly Photography
Plated meals - Plated meals are going to give your guests a formal feel, they work well at the space. If you do plated meals, remember that you will have to have place cards indicating who has what meal.
Buffet - Gives your guests choices, and is great at The Sinclair!
Stations - Can be a really fun way to showcase fun food options, works really well at the space!
Heavy apps - Is great for reception only weddings, allows you to get creative with the options, works great at the space.
Food Truck - WE LOVE FOOD TRUCKS, food trucks are awesome at The Sinclair, they pull right up to the patio, which makes it easy for guests.
Shane Long Photography
3. Think about catering enhancements!
Having some sort of appetizer during social hour, gives your guests a little snacky snack, and helps keep bar lines down! There are so many styles of appetizers you could do, butler passed, buffet stations, food trucks, grazing tables, so many options!
Equally important is late night snacks, you want to make sure your guests soak up all that alcohol.. Pizza is great, Door Dashing fast food, always check with your caterer to see what fun things they come up with as well!
4. Things to think about when finding your Sinclair Caterer.
If your caterer isn’t full-service, make sure they have someone on-site to bus tables, and make sure the caterers “foot print” is removed from the space.
Think about what your food will be served on, if your caterer doesn’t include plates, and glassware, you could always do compostable options!
You will need linens through your caterer, or you can rent them! We partner with Linen Effects, because they have some of the best linens out there! Check them out if you are still needing linen help! www.lineneffects.com
Our in-house planners Dos Goats Plans, has a very comprehensive blog that talks about questions you should be asking your caterer, if you are looking for more catering info, that is a great place to start!
We hope you found this blog helpful! Happy Planning!