Choosing a vegan catering company is a lot like choosing a regular caterer. You need to find a vegan caterer that offers appealing food with a price within your budget. Basically, you will be confirming prices and sampling the food until finding the best vegan catering in your area. Do not worry about picking a caterer until after you have chosen a date and location of the event, though. You will need to provide these details to the caterer to confirm that they are available at that time and can deliver to the event’s location.
A lot of restaurants double as caterers and can deliver enough food to feed hundreds of people when given enough notice. Think about the best vegan restaurants you have eaten at within the past few months. Call them to ask management if they cater. If they cater, they should have a catering menu that details what dishes are available. Sometimes prices are not listed on the menu, and you must ask for an estimate.
Most caterers use the same pricing scheme: they have a per person price on each dish. Vegan companies are usually no different. Complicated dishes or dishes with pricey foods are generally more expensive than a simple garden salad, for example. Sometimes the more food you order of one dish, the cheaper the food becomes overall. To get an accurate estimate, you will need to know how many guests will be at the event.
You probably would not order a custom wedding cake without trying a similar cake in cupcake form. The same goes for vegan catering when it comes to choosing high quality food. If you have never worked with a specific vegan catering company before, sample their dishes before hiring them. Some companies can put together a mini-buffet for a fee. You and friends can sample each dish to narrow down the best options for the event attendees.
Decide how much catering you need. In general, vegan catering companies allow you to choose between having them entirely set up and serve people and doing minimum setup and work. Minimum work is not necessarily cheaper in the long run, because someone has to be in charge of setting up and serving food. If not the vegan catering company, you will need to hire someone else or, depending on the type of event, ask friends to do it.
For some vegans, whether or not the catering company is strictly vegan matters. Many catering companies have a menu consisting of dozens of non-vegan dishes, and will even make custom dishes at a client’s request. If the vegan catering company being 100% vegan matters, ask management if they also serve non-vegan dishes. On the other hand, your omnivore guests might appreciate familiar buffet or menu options. It can be a tricky situation for an event planner to navigate.