Planning your Budget
When putting together an event and requesting catering, it is useful to know the budget you have available, as this will give you an idea of the style of food you can provide. These are some general guidelines for costing:
Mini meals/food stations:
- A mini meal menu (or food station menu) usually consists of a few light canapés to start (to be served while your guests are arriving) followed by 3-5 mini meals, and finished off with either a table of sweet treats, or little desserts that can be eaten while standing
- Your price range, as with any menu, will vary depending on your choices (i.e. Norwegian salmon, lamb and duck are significantly pricier than beef or chicken) but you can expect to spend between R150 and R350 per person
Canapés/finger snacks:
- There is a much bigger range for costs. You can have a canapé menu that looks beautiful and provides some light snack items for your guests for anything from R65 per person.
- The quantity and style will depend on how substantial you would like the snacks to be, how up market the ingredients are and for how long you would like the food to be served
Three course meal:
- A full three course meal would begin at R185 and could, depending on ingredients, go up to R500 per person (or more).
Some things to consider:
- A large part of your overall cost is not for the food itself. When deciding on the style of menu bear in mind the equipment, staff and décor required
- Will you need chefs on site?
- Will you need waiters serving your meal to you?
- Will you need knives, forks, tables, chairs and décor?
- An event that takes place over a meal time will always require more food. Even if you are only inviting guests to a cocktail party and drinks to say farewell to a colleague, if it happens to fall over 5pm – 8pm, your guests are going to be ravenous and will be dominating the waiters and hanging out by the kitchen
- If you have an event that is going to go on all night, you will need to have more items, so that guests can be fed throughout the evening. With a light menu, it’s tough to spread it out until late in the evening, so more food will be required if this is what you would like to offer your guests
- If you have limited space, an event that encourages people to move around and mingle may be more suitable. A sit down dinner can get quite uncomfortable in close quarters.
The whole shebang:
For a bigger, more elaborate function sometimes the whole shebang is required. A wedding, for example, may often offer guests canapés while the couple are having their photos taken, followed by a three course sit down meal. For venues that are out of town and unlikely to have late night shops, we can provide a “midnight snack” for those party goers that are likely to be hungry later on. A menu of this kind is best discussed with your Dish coordinator.
We love food, it’s that simple. We want you to love our food too. To accomplish this we are more than willing to be flexible on any of the points listed above, so give us a call and ask us your questions. We look forward to hearing from you!
