How Assessing your Event Site can Help you Provide Better Catering

Food is becoming a major part of all events, and events that are looking to create a distinct brand are using food to do that: working with great chefs and top food brands to help them wow their visitors.

Great examples are wilderness and pub in the park.

But great food requires top equipment in fantastic working order, placed in a way which helps chefs work more efficiently and consistently.

Basically, you can’t just throw some equipment into a tent and hope.

The earlier you begin thinking about your catering setup the better, because you will face challenges during design and you need to give yourself the time to look at them and find solutions.

What do you Need to Ask?

When thinking about your catering setup, one thing will influence the decisions you make more than any other – your site.

Firstly: How much space do you have for your kitchen?

Get onto site and look at where the kitchen will go: what equipment could you fit there? How will the flow of the kitchen – from deliveries to storage to prep to production and out to customers – work? Do you have the space you need to produce the food you want in the right quantities?

Secondly: What services do you have?

Do you have a water supply and ability to get rid of waste water? This could really affect the costs of having a top-quality kitchen at your event. Do you have electricity? This can be a vital question and will add complexity and cost to your install if you don’t have it.

Thirdly: What is the access to your site?

If you need lots of infrastructure and access is difficult, then this can increase the length of your site install, which, again, will add to the cost.

Walk the access and think about different size vehicles doing the same journey. Take the time to make measurements on gates and any covered entrances, bridges or tunnels, before contacting kitchen providers. If their delivery vehicles can’t make it to site, you need to know in good time.

Fourthly: How many visitors are you expecting and how many meals will you need to produce?

This is a big question, and a tough one for new events, but will make a big difference to the kit you need and the space that kit will demand, especially when it comes to storage, prepping and refrigeration.

Conclusion

For any great event, it’s down to great planning which you need to do well in advance.

Catering equipment is going to be a huge part of your event so get there early, have the conversations with your suppliers, make sure you understand your site. If you follow everything that we’ve gone through and touched base on, you will have a very successful event.

1) Start your planning early
2) How much space have you got?
3) What services do you have?
4) What is the access to your site?
5) Work with your chefs to examine the menu they want to produce
6) How many visitors are you expecting?

By Zoe Rullier, Event Sales Manager at PKL Group