Catering & event hospitality
The event sets the beat, not the day.
An event business has no opening time that starts the same way every morning. It has a before and an after — and in between, rooms that are used or stay empty depending on the booking. Working that with a daily plan means planning past reality.
From delivery to service — both ends of the cold chain in the same log.
What gets measured is the finished dish
In catering it is not just the refrigeration that gets measured but the dish on its way to the guest: main component, vegetable side, sauce — each item separately, with a stored range of 65 to 80 degrees. The same component is recorded twice, once on delivery and once at service.
If you deliver food instead of cooking it on site, you have to be able to prove both ends of the cold chain. A kitchen business only measures its appliance — in catering, quality is decided where nobody can adjust it any more.
Some measure at the holding equipment instead — hot cabinet, hot box, bain-marie, chafing dish. Others by menu line: menu 1 meat, menu 2 vegetarian. The same task type covers both ways of thinking.
Pre service and after service instead of morning and evening
An event venue needs exactly two shifts: one before service and one after it. No morning shift, no evening shift, no clock times — but two substantial lists.
That is consistent, because an event does not start at the same time every day. What repeats is not the moment but the order: unlock, set up, check — and afterwards take down, collect, verify.
The business starts at the car park
An event site is bigger than a dining room. The list before service therefore contains lines that exist in no other kind of business: open the gate to the car park, check the driveway for cleanliness, empty the letterbox, walk the building.
And afterwards: collect cushions and blankets — to dry if wet, to the laundry if soiled. Outdoor equipment back into the boxes. Waste cart to the container. Nobody walks past these things by chance, because they lie outside the building.
Rooms instead of departments
Instead of kitchen, service and bar, an event venue is structured by place: halls, buffet rooms, individual bars, servery, outdoor area, stores and wash-up. A dozen areas and more is not unusual, and nearly all of them carry place names rather than department names.
An event venue has no departments, it has rooms that are used depending on the booking. The structure of the task list therefore follows the booking rather than the org chart — and rooms that stay empty this weekend produce no tasks.
What caterers and event venues ask first
We do not cook on site. How do we prove the cold chain?
With two measuring points per component — one on delivery, one at service. You can store a target range for every reading; if a value falls outside it, that is visible in the log straight away rather than only in hindsight.
Every event is different. Do we have to create tasks each time?
No. What repeats is the order, not the occasion — one list before and one after service, with individual areas switched on depending on the booking. For recurring formats a shift of its own is worth setting up.
We cater on behalf of a client. Can that be kept separate?
Yes — through an area called "site management" for exactly that: orders sent, shortages reported, menu plan displayed, delivery notes filed. The reporting duty itself becomes a task to tick off.
Our site has several buildings. One team or several?
Usually one team with several locations. Only when crews and reporting genuinely belong apart is a separate organisation with sub-businesses worth the effort.
Klar til at strukturere din virksomhed?
Kom i gang med gastrotodo — prøv gratis i 7 dage og fortsæt derefter med den plan, der passer til din forretning.