As the famous American Chef Julia Child quotes, “A party without a cake is just a meeting.” If you are planning to make your event memorable the first thing you need to plan out is the food you are going to serve to your guests. If you manage to accomplish the herculean task of satisfying your guests with the best food, you have won half the battle. While this may be one side of the story, the caterers who try their best to live upto your expectations also go through an ordeal to bring the product in the most competitive way in terms of quality, quantity and most importantly presentation.
“Presentation of the food items has taken the center stage when it comes to serving at any event. There are some who do consider the taste and variety of dishes we provide within the package but these days more stress is laid on how you display the food items,” says Nilesh Tople who runs Tople Caterers based in Bicholim for 12 years now. While presentation has taken the center stage, catering at an event has become an event of its own with a royal set up altogether. The royal looking brass serving bowls, the plates that come with covers, spoons with the respective sizes, especially erected pandals, decorated tables, ice carvings, vegetable carved bouquets, uniforms for the caterers and if you have saree clad girls to offer the plates at the start, it comes as an icing on the top. It has all come with the added glamour and added price too. While this is too, there is a section that feels that the wedding crowd has definitely gone down because of the rising prices that come along with the presentation part. “This is my personal observation that wedding crowd has drastically dropped considering the cost to organize a wedding. Earlier the parents of the groom and the bride used to invite their village crowd and had a guest list of their own. But now since the couple getting married takes care of the expenditure and the rising costs doesn’t let them a free hand while inviting people. People tend to keep the event big with restricted guests. In the beginning we had served a wedding with 1500 guests. Now even 500 hundred odd guests become a convenient affair for the hosts,” says Jimmy Cota of Jimson Caterers, Betalbatim. Jimmy feels that the caterers try to come up with their innovative ideas to give the best presentation in order to stay in the market. The challenge now is to give quality with the increasing rates and the presentations part, adds Jimmy. “Today only 20 percent of people want quality and rest all are interested in just winding up with the event. There are catering service providers to give you the presentation and add all fancy things at cheaper rates but who talks about the quality there? I have four generations from a family who trust my quality and approach me for the quality of food we provide them. There are people who go for quality but the number is less,” opines Jimmy.
During these years, they have seen a drastic change in the kind of dishes proposed by the clients, he says. From Goan traditional dishes the choices have not shifted to Chinese, Continental, Italian etc. Amit Amoncar of Amoncar caterers is of no different opinion. “The biya bhaji (cashew nut gravy) which used to be the highlight of the menu about 10 years ago has been replaced by paneer or cottage cheese. In paneer, people look for variety of combinations in north Indian gravy, Chinese and the latest we have to tried to include is tender coconut gravy. Clients from outside the state want to taste the traditional Goan menu, but here too people look for modern touch to the old recipes. Same is with non-vegetarian too,” opines Amit Amoncar. A simple menu comprising of 14-15 items that includes two gravy items, 2 rice items, dal, bhajias, salad, pickles and desert costs around Rs 200/per plate. But apart from this, today the clients ask for more and they are ready to pay extra. Apart from the regular items people look for variety in pickles, breads etc. The healthy salads are not just the greens anymore, atleast three different variety of salads need to be included.
Like in the restaurants, the meals served at events are split into starters, main course and desserts. Specially during prolonged ceremonies, hosts want the guests to be served with few munchies or finger foods as starters. This again has shifted from the typical chutney sandwiches and samosa patties to spring rolls, tarts, canapés, kebabs, tikkis, etc. Serving a soft drink is out of fashion when you have the mojito, fruit punch and other cocktails in the drink menu. For the health buffs, caterers have also come up with detox drinks and summer coolers to beat the heat specially during the ongoing wedding season.
The latest in the wish list are the live counters. Live counters like to make the roomali rotis and naans? “Rotis and naans are part of a small section now. These days starting from the sizzling hot jalebis, people want to savour at the chat counters, pasta, kebabs and kids rush to the pizza bakers,” informs Nilesh Tople. And what about the availability of skilled labour to handle these counters? “We have an All Goa Association of Caterers comprising around 25 members where we have our specialists in each food item. So, we place our demand as per the catering orders and shuffle around with the cooks. It becomes easier instead of hiring specially per order from other places,” adds Tople.
Considering all the various aspects of services provided by the caterers, the rising prices are also a major factor specially during the peak wedding season. As the frequency of orders subside during the off season, the caterers do compromise on rates. “During the peak season we charge our clients around Rs 200 per plate with the normal menu. Customers do try to negotiate the rates during the off season where we bring down the rates to Rs 180. We too have to pay the labourers, the cooks who are with us throughout and also the maintenance cost also cannot be ignored,” admits Amit Amoncar.
With rising competition and many more players getting into the catering business, the topnotch service providers in the industry are facing the heat to provide the best and out of the box. While this is true the challenge here is definitely to maintain the quality and at the same time survive the competition.
