Ever heard the quote “So long as you have food in your mouth, you’ve solved all questions for the time being”?
Well perhaps it could be applied to corporate events. Feed your guests well, and you’ve solved all their questions.
Of course this is not completely true in the event world but food at functions still plays a very important role in determining your brand image.
The food at your event speaks a lot about how much you value your attendees. Good food proves that you have them at the center of your heart.
But delivering good food is no easy task. That’s why today we’ll be going through the most important factors to consider when planning for a catering team at a corporate event.
Read on to find out more about what to look for when planning for food at a function.
When Does Catering Come In?
At most corporate events, catering is usually involved.
It comes in during events where the guests stay for longer periods of time.
Whatever period of time you define as long is up to you, just don’t starve your guests.
We’d recommend catering for any event going beyond two hours.
But looking for the perfect catering team can be a challenge if you don’t know what to consider.
Here’s the most important things to look for.
Range Of Food
You need to search for a catering team with a wide range of food. Especially if you’re expecting large group of guests.
This is because people have different dietary restrictions and preferences and so a small menu may be overly restrictive.
You can sample the food of multiple caterers or take a look at what they offer to make sure it is as inclusive as possible to all your attendees.
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t overdo this if it doesn’t fit into your budget-especially if you’re planning a smaller event.
Presentation
At a corporate event. Presentation means everything for the face of your brand.
When looking for a catering team, make sure you assess their presentation skills.
Check out their portfolio of images from previous events they catered at, check out their food containers, and you could even check out the servers’ uniforms as well if you want to maximize on neatness.
Do what you have to do to find the catering team with the most superior presentation skills.
It goes a long way for your image at the event.
Please-HOT
A problem at so many events-cold food.
Now I understand that sometimes keeping the food warm is a difficulty for some caterers but the majority of the time, it is all about the effort put in.
With this one, you’d have to have been to previous events where the food was hot allowing you to contact the event hosts and get them to refer you to their choice of catering team.
If you’re unable to do this, you can also resort to asking the caterer how they plan to keep the food hot.
All is well if they have their own tools and tricks up their sleeve to make sure the food stays hot.
But if they don’t know how they’ll keep the food steaming, that’s usually a bad sign.
Hygiene
This is probably the least considered aspect when looking for a catering team.
People may say you’re going too far but the truth is you have to do all this for your guests.
It can’t be “too far” if you’re doing it for the lovely people putting time off their day to show up at your event.
All you have to do here is pay a quick visit to the catering teams’ kitchens and just observe how much effort they put into cleanly preparing food.
After all if an attendee is food poisoned or even worse, multiple attendees are food poisoned, that’s a lot of damage to your brand image-seriously.
Service
When it comes to service, the only way to know is to ask around.
Once you’ve zeroed down on the two or three best teams to handle the food at your corporate event, you should ask each of them for a few numbers of their previous clients.
Your job is to ring up these numbers and ask about their experience with the catering team.
Find out about their service, their punctuality, and how well people thought of them.
This should help you come to a decision regarding which team proves to have the best track record of service at events.
You need to ensure that you pick the very best.
In the eyes of your guests, the catering team works for you. So if their service is dodgy, you don’t care much about your guests.
That’s not a good perception to have from your guests especially considering how much influence corporate events have on your brand as noted by one of our previous articles here.
Take It All In
So, now that you’re aware of the most important factors to consider when looking for the best catering, take it all in.
Go ahead and start searching.
If you ace the catering side of your event but get stuck trying to figure out how to go about planning the rest of the function, check out our Ultimate Guide to help you power forward.
We know that doing everything right in preparation for an event is a real struggle.
Don’t worry though, that’s where Tellit Events steps in to take the burden of planning and managing a corporate event in Uganda off your shoulders.
Interested in the most premium corporate function planning and management services in Uganda?
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