What Is The Hardest Type Of Catering?

WARNING: This post is filled overwhelmingly with my biases!

What is the hardest type of catering? A simple question with an easy answer: All catering is hard work, no matter what type it is. What is the most challenging type of catering? This question is also very easy to answer: Off-premise catering takes the prize. No question in my mind. All catering is hard, but off-premise is the most challenging and unforgiving.

Off-premise professionals bring catering to the client’s location of choice. It might be a home, office, museum, boat, warehouse, parking lot tent or an open field. Most of the locations off-premise caterers are asked to work in don’t have adequate shelter, electrical power or water to support proper foodservice. Off-premise caterers are always the “away” team; they never play at home.

Just as the opening night in a new restaurant is filled with what ifs, every off-premise event is filled with countless question marks and never-ending challenges. Everything from blown fuses or circuit breakers to locked doors that everyone promised would be unlocked for the event. Each off-premise event carries the same pressures and worries about mishaps and unforeseen circumstances as the first night in a restaurant.

Caterers who do off-premise events have no constants in their lives. Once they leave the friendly confines of their kitchens, nothing can or should be assumed. Guests may arrive early or late; event staff may have trouble finding the location; and clients may make last-minute changes to the menu, the timing, the décor or even the size of the event.

Off-premise caterers can only work with what they bring. They can’t just go their coolers for more food or get an extra chafer from the supply room without traveling back to their catering offices and commissary, which may be many miles from the event.

Off-premise caterers live with the constant fear of running out of food. Between unexpected guests who show up uninvited, to the need to feed non-guests such as the DJ crew, valet parkers and the location staff, off-premise caterers are challenged to insure that there’s enough food for everyone, throughout the event. And did I mention the need to keep food in the safe temperature zone without the use of normal foodservice equipment like refrigeration?

Off-premise caterers expect and welcome challenges. They relish crisis. They solve the problems of late food delivery, missing menu items, bad weather, bugs, grumpy janitors, elevators that don’t work, nervous hosts and overworked staff. They are magicians who understand that the event must go on. There is likely to be a special place in heaven for off-premise caterers, who will be welcomed—and then challenged once again to work their magic.

Do they have electricity in heaven? Water hook-ups? No matter; off-premise caterers will take care of things the way they always do.