I can't say enough how much respect I have for folks who cater professionally. You have to plan for SO MANY VARIABLES and if you miss one thing failures can cascade and ruin your event. Honestly, if you want to hire an entry-level PM, find a caterer and train domain-specifics.
I catered a medical worker appreciation lunch today: pulled pork, ribs, candied bacon, mac and cheese. Started cooking at 9 AM yesterday and went until 3 AM with BBQ. Woke up at 7 and finished everything the moment I had to walk out the door. So tense.
When I cater something I do it for free, so there's not a ton of external pressure on me. Different story for the professional folks... life or death of their business in some cases. They have to put out their best stuff every time.
There's just so much opportunity for failure. For example, meat cooks at different rates. Also, sometimes stores won't have what you need. No heavy cream, so I used whole milk. Fine, but it took twice as long to reduce... that delays other things.
And some things are just hard to estimate. Think about BBQ sauce. You have to figure out how much you need to:
- Glaze ribs (twice)
- Coat candied bacon
- Provide enough per person for pulled pork sandwiches/dipping
And if you run low, you probably don't know until its too late.
- Glaze ribs (twice)
- Coat candied bacon
- Provide enough per person for pulled pork sandwiches/dipping
And if you run low, you probably don't know until its too late.
Space is also tricky... only so much room in the smoker, oven, and cooler at a time and different things cook/warm at different temperatures. Things like ribs vary in size, so it's inexact predicting how many pans you need to hold them.
You add a food safety layer over all this... keeping things out of the temp danger zone but still trying to get things done ahead of time and serve them hot, avoiding cross-contamination, etc.
You learn lots of tricks as you go along. I do this a few times a year for different groups and I learn a bunch of new stuff every time. I always spend a bunch of time planning but always look back thinking I should have planned more meticulously.
Catering is one of those jobs everyone thinks they can do because lots of people can cook. It's just a different game when you scale up and expectations are higher. Much respect and love to you professional caterers out there from this amateur.
LOL at my heart rate this morning. You can tell what time I had to get things delivered 😂 
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