How to organize a banquet [features of organizing and holding a banquet]

A banquet is a solemn, magnificent reception with seating arrangements for guests, the most famous and deservedly popular option for organizing holidays. Most often, banquets are held to coincide with weddings, birthdays and anniversaries, corporate parties and business events.

A banquet is a large-scale event, so its organization is most often entrusted to professionals: a catering company or an off-site restaurant. In this case, the location of the banquet can be anything, from a rented area in a restaurant or cafe, to an office, home or open area. This is the main advantage of catering. You receive first-class service without being tied to a specific area.

The CaterMe service provides favorable conditions. Place a request to host a banquet, and the organizers will select the venue.

Menu, drinks and banquet service

You can organize a holiday on any budget. The larger it is, the fewer restrictions on the number and complexity of dishes. Holding a banquet has its own characteristics. Thus, waiters set banquet tables in advance. When guests take their seats, cold appetizers are already placed in front of them. If a wedding banquet or a protocol event is being organized, the waiters serve cold appetizers and salads in portions.

If there are hot appetizers on the menu, they are served in portions or on shared dishes. Desserts are served after the main courses. The number of food changes depends on the budget and the number of guests.

When organizing a banquet, there are three options for serving drinks.

Alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks are placed on the table. The waiter or one of the guests can pour them.
Juices, lemonades and water are placed on the table, alcohol is on the buffet line. The waiter pours and serves drinks.
All drinks are on the buffet line. The waiter pours them and serves them.

What does the banquet menu consist of?

Wherever you decide to hold a banquet, the catering service delivers ready-made dishes in compliance with temperature conditions, taking care of the freshness of food throughout the event.

A gala lunch or dinner involves a change of dishes:

snacks
salads;
hot;
Dessert.

There are always fruit and cheese plates on the table. Drinks are offered by waiters or guests serve themselves.

The feast begins with appetizers: cold cuts, canapés, tartlets and profiteroles with savory fillings, rolls, etc. Cold appetizers complement hot ones: kebabs, tempura, warm rolls, stuffed pancakes. Usually the menu includes two salads: a light vegetable one and a more satisfying one - meat or fish. To please everyone, it is better to rely on well-known traditional recipes: mimosa, Greek, Olivier, Niçoise, herring under a fur coat.

If the banquet is held not for 3, but for 5-6 hours, then there should be two main courses. For example, traditional meat with side dishes and julienne; baked fish and lasagna. General holiday dishes that are prepared for several guests always look impressive: stuffed pike, suckling pig, Christmas turkey or Chinese duck. When choosing a hot dish, consider whether there are any vegetarians among the guests, so that you can discuss an individual menu with the performers in advance. Large family celebrations are not complete without children. You can order a children's menu for them: hot dishes (dumplings, pizza, nuggets), a simple salad, fruit, juice.

The reception ends with a tea table. A spectacular end to the evening - bringing out the cake. Decorated with a photograph of the birthday boy, the company logo, sparklers, a figurine of the newlyweds, it always attracts the attention of guests, and at a wedding banquet it is part of the tradition. An alternative to desserts or a complement to the main one is portioned cakes on multi-tiered stands, sweets, and cookies.

Experienced caterers know how to organize a banquet without extra expenses, and will help you calculate the amount of food and drinks for each guest.

Features of the banquet

A banquet is a solemn event, which is usually timed to coincide with important occasions, such as a wedding or reception. Therefore, even if you package a birthday with your family in this format, there will be a touch of formality.

Here are some important points to keep in mind when organizing a feast.

The banquet is held in the evening. If one of the guests is caught in a traffic jam, the reception may last until the night.
If there will be children with the guests, please indicate this fact in the application. The catering company will develop a children's menu.
If guests plan to give gifts, experts will provide vases and a free table in the hall.
To speed up the serving of dishes, seat guests with the same taste preferences closer to each other.
Say how many guests are invited to the banquet. It is important to have an exact quantity, not an approximate quantity.
If you need to organize a turnkey wedding banquet, you can entrust the entire list of services to one performer, the main thing is to indicate this fact in the application.
Do you want to take the food and drinks left after the banquet with you? Specialists will prepare convenient containers in advance and help with cleaning.
If it is planned to present gifts to employees at a corporate event, professionals can also take on the organization of this part of the celebration.

The CaterMe service will help you find the ideal catering company that will organize the banquet. You just need to place an application on the website and study personal commercial offers. Compare, study and choose the best option available. Organizing a holiday for 5+ is real.

How to organize a banquet in a restaurant?

Today, the restaurant is a good venue for large events such as banquets. Almost every major city has establishments for every taste - all you have to do is choose a menu. However, not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance.

Selecting a location

Firstly, it is very important to choose the right banquet hall, or rather its size - you don’t want unwanted guests at your event, do you? As practice shows, the presence of several completely different companies and the presence of alcohol rarely leads to good consequences. Try to check on the restaurant’s website or by phone which rooms are reserved for such events and whether the premises can be rented for only one company.

Take care in advance about how the tables will be arranged: guests who arrive should clearly see each other, especially the hero of the occasion, and also be able to communicate with each other - who likes to just eat and drink? Undoubtedly, there will be such people, but banquets are created not only for this.

Who sits where?

It is especially important to discuss the seating arrangement of guests in order to avoid awkward situations and quarrels. Sketch out a rough plan of the hall, having first learned about its capabilities and area from the organizers. If you are hosting a banquet with main courses, make a list of those invited by name in advance. Each place in the hall should be marked with the initials of the guest, or, if you know the exact number of people per table (for example, this is some department of your organization), then be sure to indicate that this table is intended for a certain group of people, and they will figure it out themselves .

Pay attention to the tables: round or rectangular? Big or small? Will they even exist? For example, at buffet tables there are tables only for food, and there are no chairs for guests at all, since drinks and light snacks are mainly served, and the banquet itself is aimed at communication between guests.

Don't let people get bored!

You should definitely think about entertainment for guests - otherwise why would they come at all, since they can eat and drink at home? Returning to the layout of the banquet hall and tables, we note that the entertainment program will require additional space - for a live music group, host, troupe of dancers, etc. Don't forget that people might also want to dance, which means even more space will be needed.

Menu selection

A banquet is a rather expensive event, but in no case should you skimp on food. Most restaurants purchase products from the same bases, but their freshness should be “first” and not “second”. In other words, who wants to eat tough meat or limp fruit? We give brief recommendations:

Study the composition of the proposed menu - the restaurant itself will offer it to you, but do not be lazy to create your own, after talking about it with the chefs. Don’t be shy to try the dishes in advance - after all, your reputation depends on the quality of the food!
There should not be little food, and bread (which, by the way, must be fresh and hot) should not be stuffed into the stomachs of guests. Very often the cost of passage per person is quite high, so try to make sure that the guest does not feel deceived. A portion of a dish the size of French fries and a glass of vodka is not what is expected of you. On average, a man eats about a kilogram of food per evening in a banquet hall, but this weight does not include desserts and drinks. For women, this figure is 200 grams less.
Ask the chefs what they can offer vegetarians, and first find out if there are any among those invited. Also check with your guests who is allergic and to what foods - you can do this by sending a mass letter or simply by talking to them. Write down the survey results in a notebook and announce them to the organizers.

About drinks

No matter how much we care about food, alcohol is almost in second place after food. Here you have to rely on yourself and knowledge of who drinks how much. However, we have a hint in the “wine-vodka equivalent”: per person there should be about 300 grams of vodka and half a bottle of wine or champagne (editor’s tip: don’t go overboard on champagne, otherwise the morning will become the hardest test in your life, especially if you need to work).

Carefully check what alcoholic drinks the restaurant offers and offer to coordinate your options, but don’t make a varied lineup – whiskey, vodka and wine (red and white) will suffice. An abundant selection of intoxicating liquids will have a detrimental effect on people - no one has ever been able to mix drinks without pain.

Water is a must!

In addition to alcohol, your banquet hall must have cool still water. There is nothing worse when a guest dies of thirst because you have not provided any other drinks other than alcoholic ones. In addition, people may come to your banquet who do not drink, so purchase quality juices, perhaps soda and plain water.

Service is everything

A very important point is to make sure at the ordering stage that there is one waiter for every ten guests. There is no point in making guests wait too long, and service personnel are people too and should sometimes rest, because the job of a waiter is not the easiest.

Price

Well, in the end, pay attention to the price per person: find out whether this is the final figure, or whether you will have to pay extra for renting a hall, the work of waiters, cleaners, electricity, greening the moon (we joke, of course) and other benefits of civilization. Some restaurateurs think that the client knows how and what he must pay for, without explaining anything in advance, so the money question (as usual) is one of the most important.

We hope that we have helped you a little in the difficult task of organizing a banquet, and you will not lose face in front of your guests. Good luck!

Restaurants always sin with this, putting on average 0.8-1 liter per person on the menu. While on average there are at least 2 liters per guest. You definitely won’t be able to leave your guests without water, which means you’ll get an additional hefty bill... So it’s better to think through everything in advance and feel confident at your holiday.

It is ideal if there is a catering manager at your wedding - a special person who will monitor the work of the restaurant and initially help you order the right amount of food.

The second advantage of the catering manager is that he will make sure that the dishes are brought out exactly according to the script, and not when the guests have already left and the show program has long ended.

The most competent option is a detailed menu with a fixed check amount. As a rule, at the moment when you are told the news at a wedding that something has ended, you are bewildered, but no one wants to figure it out during the wedding. And all that remains is to take out the donated money and pay it for the treat.

It is these considerations that guide restaurants. Be alert and build your relationship with the restaurant so that later you don’t have to experience headaches and part with completely unnecessary money.

Wedding banquet venue

Favorite places for banquets are a variety of restaurants and cafes. Owners of such establishments often have a specially equipped banquet hall designed for such events. In the warm season, you can organize an outdoor banquet; a celebration in nature will charge your guests with energy and positivity.

If your choice falls on a restaurant, the following tips will be useful to you.

The owners always require an advance payment, which will serve as a guarantee of your reliability. This can be either a certain amount or a percentage of the order value.
Waiters are not included in the price of the banquet; you will have to pay for the work of each of them separately.
Not only waiters, but also musicians will need to be paid.
Some restaurants require an additional fee to rent a banquet hall.

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Choose a banquet hall so that its interior is in harmony with the theme and style of the wedding. You can negotiate with the owners and decorate the hall yourself. In this case, you need to carefully consider the design.

If there is a TV or speakers in the hall, think about what kind of music will be played at your banquet? Download your favorite songs in advance and give them to the restaurant owner.

The hall may have one table in the shape of the letter U, or there may be many tables designed for 4-6 people. Think in advance which option is preferable for you.

Rules of conduct at the banquet table

At the table you need to sit upright and across the entire seat, leaning slightly forward. When participating in a conversation, you can only turn your head. Your legs should be kept together near the chair, and not stretched out. Only hands can be on the table; elbows cannot be placed on the table, they must be pressed to the body. If you eat using only one hand, then the second is also on the table, fingers folded together.

At the table you cannot criticize food or talk negatively about others. You need to eat and drink calmly, silently. The mouth should not be overfilled with food. If there is something in your mouth, you should not talk or laugh. They chew food with their mouth closed.

When they start serving, a napkin is taken from the plate. Folded in half, it is placed on your lap. After finishing the meal, the napkin is placed to the left of the plate. The paper napkin should be slightly crumpled and placed on the plate itself.

It is customary to hold the spoon between the thumb and index finger, with its handle slightly resting on the middle finger. The spoon must be filled so much and in such a way that the contents do not spill out of it at all. The spoon is brought to the mouth obliquely, and it cannot be completely placed in the mouth.

The fork is held in the left hand, and the knife, respectively, in the right. If you eat with only one fork, then it is held in your right hand. The handles of the fork and knife should be in the palms. The fork is held with the bulge upward. The fork and knife can be held in such a way that the tip of the index finger rests lightly on the junction of the handle and the tip