As a caterer planning a wedding, one of the main questions I always get asked is “how many staff do you reckon we need?” or “can we lose a member of staff?”. There are so many different things that we have to consider when working out how many members of staff to put on an event. We always aim to give the best service and anything below brilliant isn’t good enough for us. Sometimes that means that we have to have a few extra members of staff than you would think.
This is the most obvious thing that would change the amount of staff we need. The more guests the more staff. We want everyone to receive the amazing NOSH service standard that we expect. If we don’t put enough staff on to serve the number of guests you have attending then the service standards could slip. Also, the more guests = the more mouths to feed. If there are lots of people attending your wedding or event we will need to put more chefs on so that the food is delicious and can be served super quick.
The venue and location you choose can alter how many staff we would put on an event. If you hire a venue where the kitchen is at one end and you decide to use the room that is a football pitch distance away, we will need more staff so that the food can get to your guests within a timely fashion. We would hate for half the room to be nearly finished by the time the other half of the room are just being given their meals.
Also, the equipment that is available to us within the venue is really important to think about. If, for example, we have instructions from the venue that the hire equipment needs to be picked up on the same night we could use extra hands to help get out as quickly as possible. Or if we are using the venue's equipment such as plates and glasses we have to wash these at the end of the night and put everything back where we find it. One of NOSH’s important jobs is to always leave a venue cleaner than we found it and to do this we will need extra bodies around to help clean.
If you have got a strict time schedule to stick to and, for example, choose 6 different canapés that we have to serve 200 people in the space of an hour - we will need more staff. We might not always put every member of staff on for the whole duration of the event, we could just get a couple of extra pairs of hands to help out with the rush of food service and then send them home as soon as we don’t need them. However, if the run sheet provided doesn’t give us a lot of time to set up or to serve food then expect to see a higher amount of staff within your quote. Again, we only do this to make sure our service standards are kept as high as we want them.
At NOSH we have the most accommodating team you can imagine. Nothing is too much for us to do and we will always, 100%, go the extra mile for our clients. However, if you have intricate table designs and layout, we may have to put an extra person/people on to help with the setup. We are always happy to help and we want to be as involved in making your big day special as possible, but to do this the more staff we have available to help the better.
Choosing the service style can be a massive decision to make. When considering the options you also need to be aware that different service styles need different members of staff. For example, if you have chosen to go for a buffet option we tend to go for the rule of - 2 waitstaff serving from the buffet, 1 runner getting extra food from the kitchen, 2 chefs in the kitchen cooking up the delicious masterpieces you are about to enjoy. However, if you go for a formal plated option we try and stick to the rule of - 2 tables of 10 people per waitstaff. It could also require 3 chefs in the kitchen to be able to cook and plate up incredible meals for everyone.
I hope you now have an insight into just some of the different reasons we would put more members of staff on an event. With all of this said, NOSH staff are trained to be professional, hardworking, knowledgeable and full of smiles so however many of us you have got working with you I’m sure you will have a fabulous day!!
