Social catering covers a range of events from cooking in a families’ home on a fairly regular basis to a wedding. Depending on the clients specifications the caterer may prepare a buffet or a full five course sit down meal. During social catering there is more of an opportunity to be creative. A lot of caterers cover both corporate and social catering. Most caterers develop good working relationships with companies that provide table linen, glassware and cutlery. This is vital as you may have an unexpected booking for far more people than usual – you would not want to turn this work away due a lack of materials. A good caterer also should have access to good reliable staff on a casual basis. Again if you had a bigger booking than usual you would need to fulfill the requirements. The ability to be able to provide whatever the client needs is so important, if you cannot they will go and find a caterer who can.
There is also the type of catering in the form of restaurants. This is different in the sense the restaurant decides what they will sell and customers, based on this, will visit them or not. It means if you work as a caterer in this type of establishment you cook or prepare in line with what the restaurants recipe might me. Unless you have been employed to develop new dishes the chances are your input in terms of recipes will be minimal.