Keep a list of catering options in your files

I organize events regularly (not of the scale that would require an event organizer, much like my friend Marc Smith from Amuse Consulting, but still, events large enough that would warrant catering). I recently organized a bloggers night and was looking for catering options. While normally I would have gone to the two or three that I keep on top of my head (one of them is LunchBox, the Gastown-based catering service that provided the food for Mental Health Camp), I figured I had to survey other options. So I shopped around, went to a few sushi restaurants, and even considered Costco in order to keep the costs on the low.

Coincidentally, we ended up at Costco yesterday and I got to browse through some of the platter options that the hyper-market provides. It occurred to me that my idea of keeping a file of the various catering options that I’ve explored recently wasn’t a bad idea. I would probably get some of the Costco platters if I was in a rush to do an evening event and it was something light (like fruit or veggie platters), something for a late night or early afternoon working meeting. I see the value in the services of catering and event planning, and for a large event, I probably would hire an event organizer and a caterer. Really small meetups, I source on my own.