Your Wedding Food Journey

So many personal touches go into your wedding day, from the guest list and clothing attire to décor and cocktails. Your wedding food journey is no different. So many decisions go into feeding your guests. Let’s look at some of the bigger questions to ask yourself before embarking on your quest for the perfect reception.

Do you want traditional wedding fare with a cocktail hour with hors d’oeuvres? Dinner and cake? Or are you looking for something a little more boho or ethnic? Do you want to focus on local cuisine or cuisine from your travels? Always consider your budget. Once you nail down your vision, you can imagine your food progression from there.  

Let’s explore the most traditional options that are available for you; but if you can dream it, we can make it happen!

COCKTAIL HOUR: PASSED APPETIZERS

Your wedding food journey starts right after the ceremony during cocktail hour. This is the time to really wow your guests and there are so many options. Traditionally, the time frame is about an hour, giving your guests time enjoy a cocktail or two. Signature drinks are a fun way to express who you are or where you’ve been. Maybe you love good bourbon, so Old Fashions are available. Or maybe tequila is your thing, so we create a Spicy Pineapple Margarita and pair it with mini shrimp ceviche tacos. Guests tend to be more adventurous with appetizers, so this is the time to be bold with your selections.  

COCKTAIL HOUR: STATIONARY APPETIZERS

Stationary appetizers work well within this time frame too. Think easy pick-up items. Charcuterie and cheese tables are a popular trend right now. Guests love the experience and viewing the spread – and you make all your dietary restricted guests happy at one table. Vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free, etc. There is something for everyone!

After cocktail hour is dinner. Do you want plated or buffet? This is where your venue space, kitchen configuration, budget, and overall feel of your reception come into play when making a decision. What will be the setting for your wedding food journey?

BUFFET DINNER SERVICE

Buffets are the easiest and more budget friendly of the two dinner options. Our buffets always include candles, beautiful linens, cool platters, and display pieces. A buffet does not need to be boring! 

Conventional dinners start with a salad, bread, vegetable, starch, and protein. Again, it doesn’t have to be boring, but you should uphold these traditions to assure your guests are satisfied. There should be ample staff to easily and quickly replenish food. We prefer a food captain to serve the meat and accompanying sauce; it keeps the line going smoothly and they can answer guest questions and keep a watchful eye on the buffet for replenishing and clean up.

PLATED DINNER SERVICE

Generally, this is the more expensive option. Plated dinners require far more service staff and kitchen crew to execute your coursed meal in a timely manner. Some things to consider: Do you want your salad pre-plated or served to guests after a welcome speech? Do you want wine service? Pairing wine with your entrée is elegant and adds a special touch. Plated dinners at weddings generally have guests seated, the wedding party grand entrance, followed by a welcome toast by the host. Salad, bread and butter, entrée, and cake are to follow. If you give your guests choices between beef, chicken, fish, or vegetarian, you will have some work to do on the front end. You will need to ask your guests what their entrée selection is at the time invitations are sent out. You will need to send this list along with a seating chart and place cards that designate what each guest chose for the evening. Your caterer will work off this sheet to prepare the proper amount of food, arrange staffing, and serve your guests promptly.

CAKE & DESSERTS

Everyone’s favorite stop on your wedding food journey… Dessert! While cake is the standard, many of our couples choose a different route. Is pie your thing? Do you prefer cupcakes? Many of our clients have family traditions, and we love to incorporate that into the cake service. Have you ever been to a big wedding where the family bakes dozens and dozens of Italian wedding cookies? Such a labor of love!

Should you choose cake, your caterer will cut each slice and either serve your guests or place it on a designated table for guests to choose from. Table designation works well when you have multiple flavors.

LATE NIGHT SNACKS

This grows in popularity every year. You don’t need to plan for every guest on this one. Generally, 50-75 percent of your guests will leave after the cake is served, so you can plan your late night treat for a smaller count. Have fun with this! Do you love pizza? How about mini pizzas served in little boxes? Did you go to Chicago and taste their wonderful Chicago Dogs? Biscuits and Gravy? Cookies and milk? Nachos? Anything goes. The guests absolutely go crazy for this last little surprise. It’s the perfect way to add a final stop on your wedding food journey.

Today’s wedding is more about showing who you are as a couple and showing love to all your friends and family that support you. Don’t be afraid to be adventurous and have fun with your food choices. The options are endless. You don’t have to have a traditional buffet or plated dinner. Stations are so much fun and offer a casual, more relaxed vibe to your reception. We love passed appetizers, followed by 2-3 food stations. Noshing stations with charcuterie, dips, crudites, cocktail sandwiches, savory tarts, etc. are a great start. Street tacos with all the accoutrements and a chef preparing them to order is always a hit. Seafood stations, pasta, stations are equally popular. And of course, BBQ! This is Kansas City after all.

So let your personalities shine and have fun creating your wedding food journey. 

VENDORS WITH HEART: OLIVE EVENTS

So often, I see vendors who work tirelessly in this industry, not for the money, but because of the passion and love they truly have for what they do. Every once and awhile, I want to recognize those people that, behind the scenes, exude every ounce of energy to make your wedding day absolutely perfect.

Olive Events offers fresh, innovative and handmade cuisine. They use the freshest and the highest quality ingredients and are committed to making each event unique and the offer the very best for their clients and guests. If you are looking for a catering company that emphasizes creative food along with exemplary service, look no further. A couple of things that we love about Olive Events.

1. Top notch culinary creations.
Olive Events does a remarkable job in not only flavor and taste of their food, but also the delivery.  We love the presentation of everything this team produces whether it be a plated meal or a buffet- the display is beautiful.

2. Excellent Customer Service.
The team at Olive Events has excellent customer service and delivers time and time again with a smile on their face.  This catering company is what I would call at “boutique caterer” in that they aren’t so large that they bring in temporary servers to work an event.  Their service staff is with them each and every weekend so you know that you are getting the very best in service.  In addition, they are amazing to work with on the front side when it comes to planning your event to ensure it is customized and tailored to your taste.

3. The food, staff, and displays go above and beyond in exceeding expectations.
Olive Events is the full package when it comes to event catering to ensure they are delivering the best time and time again.

Tell us about your business, and what inspired you to get started?

I have been catering in Kansas City for almost (gasp!) 20 years. I went to culinary school with the intention of becoming a chef and restaurant owner. At that time, I started working catered events on the side and loved it. I enjoyed the creativity required from week to week and the opportunity to personalize each menu for each client.

What drives you to deliver the best in service and heart to your clients?

I have surrounded myself with the best in the business. Olive’s culinary team is driven to prepare creative, fresh, innovative food. And last, but certainly not least, our servers and bartenders at each event are dedicated to providing the best service possible.

All of us at Olive Events work hard, but we also have fun together. When you have worked together for 10+ years, you really do become family.

Olive Events sets the bar in terms of thinking outside the box with menu items and how it is displayed. Can you share some food trends that you are seeing right now?

Food trends we are currently seeing are heavily influenced from the South. Shrimp, grits, fried green tomatoes, peach pie and bourbon cocktails to name just a few. I’m constantly on the lookout of new, exciting recipes incorporating fresh ingredients, and pairing different flavors to provide a unique, flavorful experience.

Every wedding has a different “taste” and we want to make sure we capture the vision of each event. Olive offers a sit-down meeting with a private tasting to create extraordinary menus for our clients. We provide them with seasonal samples of our favorite items; we can customize the tasting to their preferences; and we’ve also been known to try out new recipes with the latest trends during these meetings.

Providing this service opens the door to a conversation about what is in their dream wedding. We customize each menu item based on the client’s dream for the day, specific tastes, and budget.

We, at Olive, like being creative, working the funky hours, the camaraderie amongst friends, the pressure as well as the instant gratification. We like keeping up on the latest trends and not following the norm!

Life & Work with Marisa Roberts- VoyageKC

Hi Marisa, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I started culinary school in 1995 and worked at several of Kansas City’s premier restaurants. I loved the idea of catering for the freedom to cook different menus, meet new people and really get creative writing menus to fit our client’s style. When I first started out, I would work part-time at various restaurants and a locally owned kitchen and décor shop, Pryde’s Kitchen and Necessities. This opportunity helped me buy all my pots, pans, platters, serving utensils, linens, etc. at a discount. I was definitely working on a tight budget and did not have the luxury to make big purchases. 

My husband is an entrepreneur and taught me to budget, work hard and pay for necessities and equipment as I go. If I needed an oven or new sheet pans, I saved my money and paid for these items as I went. (I didn’t know how important this would be for me and my company when COVID hit). 

I have always had the heart of a chef, so preparing our menus from scratch, with fresh ingredients has always been the most important aspect of my company. If we prepare our food with integrity, everything else seems to fall into place. If the food is bright, fresh, and beautiful, the kitchen is excited and proud to execute the menu. The clients are delighted to have a custom menu that reflects their personalities. The service staff is shining and attentive to our guests, knowing the food is at its best. 

Over the years, our hard work has paid off. We are a very busy, boutique catering company. We cater weddings, corporate events, fundraisers, wine dinners, whatever celebrations our clients dream up, we are there! 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth road? In catering?! Challenges pop up all the time in catering. When you are a mobile business, things can happen, even with the best planning. Delivery vans get flat tires on the way to events (never on the way home). We forgot to pack the martini glasses. The guests showed up 45 minutes early. An hour late! Drunk! The microgreens were to be delivered early Friday morning, and are delayed due to vendor issues. So many things! Problems will arise, they just do. It’s how we handle these issues that are so important. The client must never know. We see the problem, fix it, and move on. Our experience gets us through the chaos, and at the end of the event, we have something to laugh about. But we also reflect on what went wrong, how do we prevent it from ever happening again? That is how we grow as a company. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Olive Events + Catering is known for its creative menus, integrity, and style. I am passionate about food and more than that, I love what food represents to people. Good food is made from scratch, prepared in a meaningful way, and is something we are really proud of. To me it means friends and family gathering around a big table and sharing time with each other. 

We cater a ton of weddings in Kansas City, and we love getting to know our clients. When we talk and listen, really listen to them, we find out about their food favorites, and memories that make them smile. If the groom’s grandmother made his favorite pie for him every summer when he would visit her, we try to recreate it, but maybe in a more modern way, or way the works for 250+ guests. They are usually blown away that we can do that. Or would do that for them. 

My event coordinators, chefs, service staff, etc. all know to say yes and find a way to make our client’s events memorable. That passion sets us apart from others. 

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
My mentors were all purists in the kitchen. Most snub their noses at caterers. I had to learn how to cater big events on my own, but these chefs are what kept me honest in the kitchen, working hard, and preparing food that I would be proud to serve my industry friends, which is what kept me in line. I would have loved to have had a mentor in the catering industry. It would have been so much easier back in the beginning to have someone to bounce ideas off of or figure out how to do a plated dinner for 300. Or learn how to say no. 

I encourage new caterers to find someone they admire, either in catering, a smart business person, or a chef to help them along the way. Also, other vendors in our industry can be a great resource, so go to those networking events. Get to know the event planners, venue managers, rental companies, etc. They know everyone! And you should too. 

Hiring the Perfect Caterer

There are more considerations to make than just the taste of their food (although that is very important) when your goal is hiring the perfect caterer. You’ll want to think out the entire experience. Here are some things to think about when you’re meeting with your top choices.

What style of food, service, and degree of formality are you looking for and what caterer is best suited to ensure that your vision is a success? Let’s work on hiring the perfect caterer!

FORMALITY OF YOUR EVENT

A multi-course plated dinner tends to be the most refined guest experience, but it also is the most expensive due to rentals, additional staffing requirements, and bigger food components. Not all catering companies are experienced in plated meals, as it takes a lot of staff and planning to ensure that the meal arrives to your guest warm – make sure you hire a capable caterer, or your wedding dinner could be a disaster. 

Choosing a buffet or stations can deliver a more casual feel. Find a caterer that can not only create a unique culinary experience within your stations or buffet but also can set the food tables to be just as beautiful as your guest tables. Buffet and stations allow you to save on the extra service staff and rentals that is needed for a plated meal. 

Passed hors d’oeuvres are the go-to for a mingling cocktail party. While servers are needed the evening of the wedding to pass the food or set up displays, most of the work lies in the prepping. Imagine making hundreds of the same small bites – or for heavy hors d’oeuvres (which is to appease a full dinner appetite) imagine being in the count of thousands of pieces. If you are looking for stylish bites, that are as appealing to the eye as they are to eat, make sure you find a caterer with the creative capacity to turn food into art.

BUDGET

What portion of your overall budget do you have set aside for catering? Hiring a catering company is more than just about the food. They’ll also be providing service staff, chefs, and several of your rentals (tablecloths, plates, utensils, glassware, barware, etc.). It’s important that your budget reflects room for the extra items needed to service the food at your wedding.

ADAPTABILITY

Caterers are in the service industry and take it very seriously. From professionally trained chefs, experienced wedding planners, friendly service staff and bartenders, a good catering company can execute all the moving parts with ease. Unexpected things can happen at events, it’s how your catering staff handles them behind the scenes that counts! Look for caterers with experience, strong relationships with your vendors and cool under pressure attitudes. A strong team works together so you enjoy the day.