10 Ways to Cut Costs on Your Catering without Sacrificing Quality

By Catering Staff | August 1, 2016

If you’ve decided to spend a good deal of your budget on catering, it doesn’t mean that you should just go for the highest priced items and call it a day. Wouldn’t it be nice that even if you’re willing to splurge on your big day’s food, you can still find ways to cut some costs?

According to experts, there are a lot of ways how you can cut corners without sacrificing the quality of your catering. Here are some good examples that you can take cues from for your event.

1. Offer generous servings of salad. They will ensure that you’re serving enough food for the guests without spending a lot.

2. Maybe you should skip the raw bar? Even if your guests are of the elite crowd, this station is pricey and tends to get the least fans most of the time, so maybe you can just get a different station to make the most out of your budget.

3. Substitute on seafood. You’ll spend less if you opt for mussels and calamari instead of shrimp cocktail and scampi. You can also go for seafood that are in season at the time of your event so you can save more.

4. Don’t repeat menu items. If you’ve already served salad during the cocktail hour, skip it for dinner.

5. Pay attention to the presentation of the food as well. People eat with their eyes first, so if you can wow them with nice presentation, you don’t have to worry too much about serving more affordable foodstuffs.

6. Offer a delicious vegetarian fare. These dishes will be friendly to your budget and non vegetarians will still love it because it’s an uncommon event menu item.

7. Come up with a different, more affordable menu for the staff and entertainers. This will let you save a good deal, but make sure to still feed them good food.

8. Cut costs on your open bar by opting to serve beer and wine with two signature cocktails that are in your wedding colors. Skip the top shelf liquors as well, especially for the cocktails, and go mid-shelf. You can also opt to close the open bar an hour early. Just remember to serve coffee so guests can sober up way before they have to drive.

9. Opt for a less labor intensive cake. Regular icing cakes will cost less than those with fondant.

10. Control the portions of your desserts and serve bite size sweets instead. This will let you cut costs and prevent waste.

Whether you’re getting catered by a full service catering company or you’re planning to work something out with Bob Evans, these tips can come in handy to help you cut costs for your event’s food. If only every event is a backyard bbq at home where you can always rely on Arby’s meat platters, then you don’t have to fuss about your budget.