Plan Your Meetings

Hip menu mess: July 2008 Morsel

With the increase of funky, trendy, themed boutique hotels, it’s getting more difficult to pre-plan F&B. Why? Because these fun-to-visit hotels are putting so much “personality” into their catering menus I can’t figure out what they’re talking about. Several times this year, I’ve had to call the catering manager because I couldn’t tell whether the cutesy theme menu was describing a plated or buffet setting. Sometimes they add insult to injury and design the menu pages so artfully it’s impossible to find what I’m looking for.

Folks at corporate, please go back to writing menus that people understand: Call a buffet a buffet and a plated meal, plated. If you want to be clever, put that energy into the execution of the event, because that’s the best way to satisfy your buyers. Nothing’s worse that going to a hip, luxurious property… and getting a traditional buffet that tastes blah.

— Claire R. Gould

Claire R. 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, and publishes a quarterly online newsletter “The Claire Diaries.” If you have any feedback for her, please leave a comment.