Pros and Cons of the Different Options for Your Next Event.

Planning a wedding, business function or other catered event often involves making a decision: sit down or have a buffet? Are other alternatives, such as a cocktail reception with canapés and food stations, or family-style service, great options? There are advantages and disadvantages to each option, so determining your goals and priorities will help you find the best option for your event. Is your event formal or informal? Is the quality of the food the most important thing or is your main concern to have a large quantity and variety? Do you want guests to get up and mingle while eating or sit for an hour or so for dinner?

In a sit-down format, food should be as fresh as possible and plated as the dishes are served. It’s true that many budget hotels and caterers can pre-prepare entrees and keep them in a warming box before dipping and shipping. This practice is often the reason why food dries out or becomes rubbery at larger events. Be sure to ask your vendor how they prepare hot food or go to the kitchen of the hotel you are considering during service and see how they work.

At a sit-down event, guests are more likely to eat the dish as it was designed to be eaten, with the right amount of sauce and the right ratio of garnish and protein. The presentation of the food can be very refined or rustic depending on the particular event. Either way, the food maintains its integrity and can be more easily presented at the proper temperature and with attention to detail. Ideally, it goes directly from the pan to the guest’s plate and is served immediately.

Family style is a dinner where dishes are served on trays that guests pass around the table. Each diner serves himself from platters or is assisted by a serving staff member. This style of service can evoke the feeling of a Tuscan villa where everyone is dining at long farmhouse tables or “kings tables,” the setup where several eight-foot tables are arranged close together to form one long, narrow table. Some precision in presentation and temperature is lost as food is passed around on plates, but family style can be an attractive, less formal format with a well-designed menu. One drawback is that the last guests to be served from a particular dish may not appreciate the same presentation as the first to be served.

Buffets have become less popular recently because many hosts don’t want their guests to have to spend time in line. As guests fill the plates, it can sometimes become a jumble, with different flavors and sauces thrown together. Keeping food at the right temperature can also be a challenge in the buffet format. Chafing dishes, a common solution, tend to dry out or overcook food when it sits in them and have fallen out of favor with upscale caterers who often prefer to present buffet food on regularly rotated hot plates. On warmer days, it can also be a challenge to keep food cold on the buffet, such as salads or sushi, but caterers often come up with creative solutions. Waste is a big factor at buffets because guests often take more than they can eat.

The main advantage of buffet-style service is that it is easier to offer a wide range of food options, which can be a good option for a diverse group with very different tastes. Buffet service often uses fewer wait staff and can sometimes be less expensive than a sit-down event. Buffets can also encourage interaction among guests because they are forced to get up from their chairs and mingle in line.

A better option to encourage guest interaction and provide variety is the reception cocktail or food station menu. Usually hors d’oeuvres are passed around and individual food stations open. It has surpassed standard buffets in popularity. The food stations are located in different areas of the room and each can have a different theme or they can all have a cohesive theme. “Action stations” are popular, where chefs prepare food to order in front of guests, also resulting in fresher, hotter product than at a typical buffet. The meat can be sliced, mixed with pasta, oysters removed, and sushi rolled to order and then put directly on the plate. Guests are constantly interacting with each other as they go from station to station and get smaller individual plates from each other.

Many of the most successful events are combinations of formats, such as seating first and an entrée followed by a dessert buffet or first served followed by a family-style entrée.