Plan Your Meetings

Buffet Meal Tips: July 2006 Morsels

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By Claire Gould

When doing a buffet meal, here are some suggestions to enhance guest experience:

• If seating is for everyone, instruct banquets to set the tables completely instead of placing silverware in a napkin roll on the buffet. The room looks much nicer.
• Ask that banquets pre-set or serve the beverages instead of having drinks on the buffet. This eliminates the hassle of guests getting up and down during the meal.
• If the banquet room space is tight, use a whole cake on the center of each table and it will also double as a centerpiece, eliminating the need for guests to get up for dessert.
• Ask in the pre-planning meeting if the hotel uses any décor for the buffets. Some hotels own non-floral buffet décor. If it is in your budget, get buffet florals and use them for the entire week. 
• Food and china placement on the buffet is important. Many times banquets will place a soup at the beginning of a buffet instead of at the end. If you are doing a soup, have a server at the end serving it or do separate soup stations. If you are doing rolled silver, that also should be placed at the end of the buffet.

Claire Gould is the owner of Rx for Catering, LLC, a culinary and logistics company that works globally negotiating and designing menus for meetings and events. Her company has done work for Coca-Cola, IBM, Honeywell and Randstad, among others. Gould teaches and writes about culinary and banquet trends and topics. If you have any feedback for her, please leave a comment below.