I think we all know what a buffet is; tables set up in a line with plates at the start of the line. In large stainless steel bowls, we have focaccia bread & two salads. Then the chafing dishes carry and hold all the hot dinner items. Usually its 5 or 6 chafers. A pasta, a vegetable, a potato and two for chosen proteins. At the end of the line is me, Ricardo from Ricardo’s, and I usually have a sauce that I am finishing your meal with or reminding you about the parmesan cheese for your pasta. We always serve the buffet line from the other side as we find we can expedite the line faster this way and more importantly answer any questions about the food you are about to eat. We require two banquet tables 6’ is preferred but 8’ works as well and with linens

Family-style dinner is your meal broken up into 3 courses. The guests DO NOT have to get up and go to the buffet line. We bring the food to you in big serving bowls with either a serving spoon or tongs. The first course is always the pasta. You serve yourself and pass the bowl around the table. If all the pasta is used up and the table would like more we bring you another bowl. I rarely have to though unless I have a table of big burley men that can EAT. When finished we clear used plates. The second course is always salads. Once again we bring the salads to you with serving utensils and you serve yourself and pass the bowl around the table. Course 3 is your main course. Your 2 proteins, potato and vegetables are brought out for your final course. When finished we clear all plates and cutlery.

Family style is considered more elegant and your guests really notice the difference. Also the bride and groom get plate service. This means we will plate every course for you so you don’t have to. A nice touch for the VIP’S of the day. Another benefit is if you’re having lets say 5 or more speeches after dinner, the courses of family-style dinner allows you to have 1 or 2 speeches after the first and second courses leaving you with just one or two maybe 3 speeches left after dinner is over. This makes for a wonderful flow of dinner and speeches. As a man I can attest that when there’s 5 or 6 or more speeches after dinner, my attention span starts to wander. I’m generalizing but I’m also pretty accurate with that train of thought. Remember I go to a wedding every week so I see 45 to 50 weddings a year and try to pay attention to everything and everyone attending. I see what works and flows and I see what doesn’t.

So what does this cost? It is $8 pp extra (e.g. bronze menu would go from $40 pp for buffet to $48 pp family style). I require more service staff and they are required to work longer hours when we a serving family style. Also family style will require 3 different plates per guest as opposed to one for buffet.

Here’s an example for you on the added cost from a party rental company. Almost all plates and cutlery are just about the same price per piece. That price being $1. So lets say we have dinner for 100 people. In a buffet situation you would need to rent 100 dinner plates, 100 dinner forks, 100 dinner knives equalling approximately $300 in rentals to have your dinner. With family style you will need 3 plates per person (pasta bowl, salad plate, dinner plate). Also a salad fork will be added to the dinner fork and dinner knife. That equates to $600 for those rentals. So your rentals for dinner service will double from $300 to $600 in this example. This does not include all other things you may require from the rental company. Solely what you need extra for the dinner.

In my example, we’ve gone from $40 pp to $48 pp for 100 guests for an added cost of $800. Added cost for family style dinner plate and cutlery rentals  is $300.

So in summarizing, dinner for 100 guests is an added $1100 for the family-style dinner vs. The price of the buffet choice. If it can be afforded, it is certainly a nice touch on a very special day.

The chosen menu items of course. We will prepare & serve the dinner menu. We clear the tables of used plates and cutlery and return them to the rental bins they were delivered in. If the reception location has their own dishes and cutlery we will do one of two things. If there is a commercial dishwasher in the kitchen we will wash the dishes and cutlery and return them to their place in the kitchen. However, it must be a commercial dishwasher and NOT a commercial sanitizer which requires you to hand wash dishes first and then run them through what looks like a dishwasher but is in fact a sanitizer. In that case, we will rinse and stack all dishes in a tidy fashion on a counter as well as rinse and have all dirty cutlery soaking in a bucket. Kitchen clean up will always be at the very least as good as we received the kitchen in. I like to leave a job with a spotless kitchen. Everyone notices when you leave a spotless kitchen and everyone notices when you leave a disastrous clean up also. That would be the last thing I’d want a review to say about hiring me. “Ricardo’s had great food with very fair pricing but they left the kitchen in shambles.” That’s one thing you’ll never see in any review ever about our services.

Staffing is also included in my pricing. However they are Ricardo’s staff and have their time occupied with all things food related. You cannot assume they will bring drinks to the tables or do water service. My staff are seasoned veterans of the hospitality industry and i think highly trained. If and when time allows, which can be often, they will gladly refill waters or bring another bottle of wine to a table. We will always go above and beyond our requirements but you cannot rely or assume that water service will be taken care of by Ricardo’s staff I would say the 75% of the time we have the time to do extra things, but you never know when for example  2 of my servers are stuck in gridlock traffic and are now running late. Now things get critical and we committed to doing water service? Yes that very scenario has happened to us twice and I wish for it to not happen again. 

If the event is further south than Peachland or further north than Oyama, there will be a one-time travel charge/ fuel charge added to the final invoice. Travel/fuel charge varies on how many staff I need and how far they are travelling. Its approx. $75 -$100 added charge per staff member.  An event that has 100 guests, I would need 4 servers. If it were in Penticton or Vernon I would charge 4 x $75 = $300 travel/fuel charge. Further away from Kelowna for 100 guests would be 4 x $100 = $400. And if I’m crazy enough to take on something out of the Okanagan range, (I have a couple of times), we can discuss at that time what the added charge would be.

No I do not. There are 5 excellent party rental companies in the Okanagan. 3 in Kelowna, 1 in Vernon and 1 in Penticton and they have absolutely everything you need for any event including plates and cutlery. You will most likely be using one of these rental companies for something I can almost guarantee it.

The short answer is no but here’s why. Most catering companies make 5 -10% extra food. I go closer to 20% more for a few reasons.

1. I never want the embarrassment of running out of food. That is just not a good look.
2. I do like my staff to take home some food for their families.
3. I prep my food most of the time out of Lake Country Alliance United Church Kitchen and they have a community fridge that gets filled by locals with excess and emptied by locals with little. Sunday morning I put at least 10 -15 dinners for two in carry out containers and they’re all gone by Sunday evening. So I do something charitable with the leftovers and that’s a good thing.

However there is some good news. The bride and Groom often do not eat some or most of their dinner. Its just such a whirlwind of day. Talking with relatives and friends you may not have seen in years or the photographer wants you on the balcony to take pictures as the sun sets perfectly. All these factors and guess what? You hardly ate. It happens to almost every bride and groom every Saturday. So what I do is package a dinner for two for you as well and the next day you can say I ate my dinner at my wedding. It was a day late but ate my dinner. So I do send you home with that atleast.