05/06/2025
Many people ask me what a catering job entails, how do we figure amounts of food and get it right, how do we decide how to charge, etc. So below is a little inside info on a day in the life of our catering services:
All catering jobs take a minimum of 3 days to prepare for.
Day 1: shopping for supplies and food needed for the event. This always includes a trip to Champaign to get what we need. We do not keep extra stuff on hand for catering. We buy everything fresh for each event. I am very picky about the products we use and will go to 10 different stores if I have to to make sure I get the right stuff. I won’t substitute something that’s “cheaper” or “close enough” to the product I’ve always used. It sometimes takes a second trip the day before the event if we need fresh fruits and vegetables. Day 1 is usually an 8+ hour day.
Day 2: Prepping the day before the event. This is the day we make all the sides and get the meat prepared or ready for the smoker/cooker. We get all supplies boxed and ready to be loaded for the day of event. This is usually an all day thing. Not just an 8 hour work day. Depending on size of event it’s about a 12-15 hour day.
Day 3: Cooking all food for the event on day of event. This day is spent timing when all food needs to be put in cooker and taken out, loading things needed for event, packing gators with food and transporting it, travel time, unloading and setting up for event, people eating, packing left overs, cleaning up, loading stuff back up after event, unloading stuff at home or restaurant, cleaning and putting things away that were used for event. This day is usually another 12-15 hour day.
So on average about 40 hours to prepare and complete a catering job. When we do the food tents add a few more hours and twice the work. There are many we have to hire extra help for or have them do one job while Kev and I do another because stupid me hates to say no to a job so will book multiple on same date🤪 Thanks to my family who are our extra helpers most of the time😁
Charging is tricky because meat prices are all over the place and so are groceries and supplies. Think about your own grocery bill and probably quadruple it🤦♀️. We choose to charge per person on most jobs and this covers all costs involved: food, supplies, labor, travel, etc.
Every event is different and asks for different things so pricing is different for every event. We decided this year we wouldn’t do any events for under $15 per person due to all work involved but there’s a few I’ve went under that on. Again, all events are different and want different things. We try to give discounts when we can. We understand some of these events are fund raisers. We also have to cover our costs and make a little profit or we can’t continue to do this🤷♀️😂😂
As for knowing the right quantities to make I will be truthful…..we’ve gotten very lucky🤦♀️😂😂 I truly don’t have an exact method of figuring out how much food is needed. We’ve kind of figured out over the years how many each pan will feed and we use that as our guide on how much to make. We are usually pretty close though there are times when the number we are asked to cook for and the number that show up to eat don’t match but hey…who doesn’t love left overs 🤷♀️
Any hoo….thats our catering life. I’m sure I left some things out but you get the picture. Oh yeah….and we added running a restaurant into this busy, chaotic business😩🤦♀️😂😂 Who’s idea was that🤔🤔🤔🤔 I blame the mayor😉
