Eating well has always been considered to be a pleasure and an experience that most long for.
The chef James Beard says: «Food is our commonality, a universal experience»
Catering services are meant to provide the same excellent experiences that we receive from restaurants, with the added difficulties that the culinary experience takes place in all sorts of spaces and conditions, together with completely differing time scales. What can we tell you that you don’t already know!?
If you haven’t had time to catch up with recent trends yet, here is a quick summary of what’s happening in the catering field for you to bear in mind.
EXOTIC EXPERIENCES
We are more and more open to tasting new flavors and many dishes from around the world are growing in popularity: sushi, guacamole, tzatziki, humus, etc. A very successful recent trend is to offer buffets with corners of exotic food, giving diners the opportunity to taste genuine recipes from several countries in the one room: Japanese corner, Mexican corner, Thai corner, American corner…
LOCAL PRODUCTS
In some events, the diners will have come from abroad and all they want to do is to finish the event so they can get off to visit the host city. Give them an opportunity to find out about local gastronomy by offering them dishes that they can only find in your region. Contact producers in the vicinity and think of typical recipes to offer, so that the attendees can have direct contact with the gastronomic culture of your region.
HEALTHY MENUS
Bear in mind that we are learning about nutrition quickly, and how to control our health and body, so incorporating recipes for attendees who are concerned about food and who don’t want to give up their healthy habits just because they are attending an event will be appreciated. Offer them low fat or veggie dishes, gluten free, vitamin smoothies, etc. Users will love it.
A word of advice: Communicate the benefits of your dishes with little chalkboards (low calories, low in salt, vegetarian dish, high in C vitamin, etc.)
FOODTRUCK SERVICE
It’s well received if warm and freshly cooked meals are served, even in the middle of an event. A foodtruck can help you solve the problem of providing freshly cooked dishes immediately.
A word of advice: If you want the catering to become an event in itself and to reinforce the branding of the hosting company, then take your chef with you to cook in situ. An interactive class of how to cook local cuisine could be an experience that the attendees will remember long after the event.
CONCERNED ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
There are more and more companies who are concerned about the environment and catering services must be able to side with this message.
Think about packagings, napkins and containers made from recycled or biodegradable material. It’s plus if you communicate the donation of surpluses of menus to local ONGs or to food Banks to your clients.
