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Catering behind the scenes what you need to know for a successful fun stress-free event

Charlie McDermott 00:00

It's time for the Savour Food podcast with Southwest Florida's favorite chef, Matt Geiger. Hey there, Charlie McDermott, co-host of the show back here again with Matt. Matt, how you doing?

Matt Geiger 00:12

I'm doing good today, Charlie, how are you?

Charlie McDermott 00:14

Good, man, I feel so bad. We always do this on Monday mornings, and I know you're rocking and rolling on the weekend. So, Phil said, I know our topic today is behind the scenes, but let's just start with what was your weekend like?

Matt Geiger 00:28

Weekend was good and I don't mind doing these Mondays because it gets my week rolling, you know? Weekend was good, we did a bridal show, it's called a bridal blast. They do it every year, and it's just an opportunity for us to get in front of actual brides to plan their weddings and we know that they're actually planning their wedding. So, it's a good opportunity for us. We set up a booth. We get about hors d'oeuvres. We talk to them. We tell about our services. It's pretty cool.

Charlie McDermott 00:57

Your booth must be lined up with the hors d'oeuvres...

Matt Geiger 01:03

You have to you know, there's a couple caterers that go in and they don't have any food there to sample and you know, you gotta have something even if it's not your whatever, Lottie doll stuff, but you got to have something to give them. Plus, we do the whole booth setup, fresh flowers, linens, the whole shebang, we want to really stand out at those booths. So, but yes, go ahead.

Charlie McDermott 01:26

Also, before you get into the rest, I want to remind your listeners that we got into the planning aspects of a wedding in the last episode. So, if you haven't listened to episode three, go back and if you're planning a wedding, got to listen to that episode, but go ahead, man.

Matt Geiger 01:42

So, it's a long day, though. They want you to load in there, you know, 10 o'clock, this thing doesn't start till one, they want your booth to be ready by an hour before and then it goes till five, there's a lot of production that goes into it, you know, and I always see the rental companies put up like these huge things and I'm like, Oh, my God, that takes a whole army of people, you know, there's Tux people there, if anybody's never been to a bridal blast or bridal show, it's a really good opportunity to go see, like multiple vendors in one spot. I mean, they have DJs there, they have tux and wedding dress companies. I mean, they have chiropractors there for whatever reason, you know, there's people there are real estate agents, because people want to buy a house after they get married and there's a lot of different vendors in one spot and it's a really good opportunity to see, I saw something for the first time, was they took like an old bouquet and dried it out and like put it in glass, and it was like this globe with the wedding bouquet inside of it. It's pretty cool and I never seen that before. I don't know how much it was. I didn't talk to him, but I thought it's pretty cool, or something to say like if you're not going to save the wedding cake top, you know, maybe save the bouquet, so it's a good thing for people getting married or know somebody getting married, it's a fun thing for people to come out and see a lot of vendors in one spot.

Charlie McDermott 03:09

Where was it at this year?

Matt Geiger 03:11

So, it used to be at [Inaudible 03:11]. Now we're doing it at the Westin in Cape Coral. It's a little smaller there, but it just still feels good, you know, they do a fashion show still and they have like the runway with the tuxes and gowns and stuff coming out and they do giveaways and I mean, we giveaway half off their hors d'oeuvres, if they book a wedding thing with us, you know, just something to incentivize people, but the hurts is definitely a lot bigger, but they did it on the ice, so everybody was freezing cold, by the end of it. It's wild, I didn't even know they could do that stuff. So, but you know that, it's really good.

Charlie McDermott 03:54

All right, so what always amazes me when I go to events, whether it's a wedding, or just catering event in general is, you know, the stuff that you don't see and as we talked about, I had a little restaurant, so I understand the chaos that can happen in a little restaurant. I can't even imagine when you're doing events for a lot of people. So, I thought we'd get into the behind the scenes.

Matt Geiger 04:20

Yeah, that's a good idea, that's perfect. I mean, it kind of depends on the event and no two events are the same as much as we'd like to train and get everybody on the same foot and have an order of operations, no two events that are the same for sure. You know, it helps to backup when you're booking a wedding venue or booking a vendor or anything like that. It helps to find vendors that are familiar with where you are getting married, you know, so if you have a vendor that maybe doesn't do often premise catering they only have their own wedding venue, then maybe it's not going to be as smooth offside than what they're used to inside their venue, not anything against them. It's just what their wheelhouse is, you know, I've done a lot of on premise and off premise, and you know, my company Savour first choice catering, we're primarily off premise, because we have no venue, so, we're used to setting up anywhere. As far as weddings go, you know, people want to go get married on the beach, which is beautiful, but there's a lot of elements to take into account, you have weather is a huge one, right? And all the things that you go through, your vendors are going through all day before you get there, so, keep them something.

So, whether it's a huge one, it could be, it doesn't even have to be raining, it could just be super windy. Well, when you're on the beach, and it's super windy, sand is everywhere, right, sands all over your tables, it's all over everything or it can just be extremely hot, so what we do, we set up, like it's a little behind the scenes, we call it our off site, kitchen, it's not much and we just pretty much need a couple little burners and our oven and we could do a catering anywhere and really, but we set up our little outside kitchen, we set up a pop up tent, you know, so we're all in shade and then we get to work setting everything up, you know, if it's a real windy day, we'll maybe not set the glassware out, you know, or we'll put some chargers or something on the napkins because so the napkins don't fly away. And, you know, some things to think about when you're doing a wedding on the beach. But not all weddings are out there and outside.

So, you know, we don't always have to battle the elements, if you choose a venue, that's indoor, maybe we don't have to battle the elements outside, but there's, you know, parking issues should you get whatever valet service or something like that, you got to think about it from your guests standpoint. You know, the venue might be great, but it might be a half a mile walk, and there's a lot of venues out there like that. So, you know, like indoor venues, most of the time that are pretty much set up for vendors, sometimes they're not. Some of the things that we deal with is, we get into like a room with a sink and that's all we have. So, letting people know and letting your vendors know what they're getting into beforehand. We're good about asking, but some people aren't. So, a good site walkthrough, if you are a wedding planner or something to get kind of a site walkthrough and get it to your caterers or photographers, photographers for sure, we'll do a site visit. Just so everybody knows what they're getting into, but, you know, as far as behind the scenes stuff, I don't know really what we can get into that won't give too much.

Charlie McDermott 08:14

Well, before you jump to that, you know, just I'd love the tips, I just want to highlight a few of those, number one is probably want to ask your caterer, if you're doing an outdoor event, if they've ever done one before, and probably the beach versus any other outdoor venue is a whole different animal, because of what you said, you know, the elements that you're going to experience on the beach, you may not experience inland, so I love that and then the other is doing a walkthrough asking the caterer hey, have you ever used this venue before? So, you better understand.

Matt Geiger 08:53

Yeah, and people that do backyard weddings, we love doing backyard wedding, you know, and not a lot of people do them. I would say, you know, in the past a lot of people did, but you know, I don't get that many I might get three or four a year, and backyard weddings are awesome, you know, some of them even if it's not a big house. I did a backyard wedding right here in the villas right in the middle of Fort Myers, you know, and it was beautiful. You know, we put out that green turf grass, we put out nice tables and a tent and in these people's backyard, and it was probably like 50 people, it wasn't a huge wedding, and it was beautiful and everybody was happy and it turned out really good. So, but being able to do a full wedding out of somebody's kitchen or garage at their house. That's something that not all caterers do, you know, or they're not used to.

So, I mean, I pride ourselves on giving good product wherever we go and a lot of that is waiting to warm up the food on site, you know, everybody knows that, what food tastes like when it's been hot for five hours? You know, it's just been hot transported sitting there, yeah, it's hot, but quality wise, it's got some stuff. So, we pride ourselves on that we try to set ourselves up to give the best product wherever we go and a lot of that has to do with just having an oven. You know, having an oven is the key to all of our stuff, we can have our sauces and stuff ready, we can heat up on butane burners, we have other ways to heat up smaller things, but just simply having an oven, I mean, when we go to these condos or open houses, or, you know, anything like that, that's all we require everything else and if, for whatever reason, there is not one available, we have them, you know, we have them to bring on site. You know, obviously, it's better if we don't have to load it up in the truck and all the stuff, but we have it because we want the quality to be there.

Charlie McDermott 10:58

How about one of your, you know, what comes to mind, like just a funny little story behind the scenes that, your client never sees, but you know, you're able to juggle things and make it happen and then you know, might be a stressful moment, but at the end of the day, you can look back and go, you know, it's actually pretty funny.

Matt Geiger 11:19

We've like, a full table of salads, just blow off the table, right? So I'm always like, notorious for packing extra lettuce, and everybody feels bad because we throw away lettuce at the end of the event, but I packed so much lettuce, because one time when I was at lovers key, we were getting all the salads ready, and it's like before it's dressed, so it doesn't have the dressing away it down doesn't have things, it's just lettuce on the plate and you know, we're playing, we're probably 30 or 40 in you know, on it and lo and behold, a big gust of wind comes in, and I there was a couple little leaves of lettuce left on the plate, I'd be surprised. It is blowed all the way like the feathers, you know, like gone and everybody's like, speechless, like, what do we do? I mean, luckily, I had enough to like cover the spread, but it's like everybody's panicking and we're like, they're chopping up more lettuce and we're trying to get it on the plate. It's like, they were still in good time, but everybody, like calm down, you know, it was really stressful because we serve them all at one time. It's not like we're doing them one at a time, you know, assembling them, or putting out to 50 or 100 or 200 salads, and we're doing them all at one time. So, when you see all your work, just blow away like that, you know, it's absolutely crazy. You know, that's one little, small story, but I mean, there's lots of little things that happen. I mean, we're in the elements all the time. I've been on the barbecue outside cooking hamburgers in the rain, you know, because it's like, what do you do? The grill is hot, you gotta keep cooking them, you can't pull them off, you know.

Charlie McDermott 13:05

Yeah, and that was my question, you know, what happens? Gorgeous day and then you know, the typical rainy season right around? Sunset, in comes the thunderstorm. I mean, how does that work?

Matt Geiger 13:17

You know, generally, depending on where you're getting married, and depending on who your people are, if you have a wedding planner or a venue generally, if you know that there's inclement weather, you try to get have a backup plan, no matter what, it's really common, it's not common to not have a backup plan unless you're really dropping the ball. But you know, once you start getting vendors involved, they're all going to tell you, especially like rental companies, or set up people or whatever, you know, they don't want to set up a full ceremony with flowers and ribbons and chairs and the arch and all this stuff, to have it all blown away or get rained on or whatever. So, generally, I would say there's a backup plan, what that backup plan is, sometimes isn't ideal. But you have to have it so for instance, lovers keys a good example because you have to have a backup plan out there. Before they have the Discovery Centre, which we'll talk about that in a second because it's really cool.

Before they have the Discovery Centre, you know, it's 100% outdoor space period and the story there's nothing inside, there's no air conditioning. They have a gazebo that generally is used for like dancing, DJ bar setup, all that kind of stuff. But we have taken an entire wedding not a big one, but take an entire wedding and fit it under the gazebo as well as do the ceremony up there, because of inclement weather, right, so, and the picture still turned out awesome. It's just not maybe what you envision. So, there's always a backup plan in place, you, we always try to do the best we can to come together and that kind of stuff and there's not a lot of bad sport vendors, when it comes to like fixing something in the heat, you know, even photographers and stuff are grabbing stuff and removing it real quick, and everybody's wiping down seats. And, we've had to wipe down ceremony chairs more times than we could count because in Florida, maybe it's not a storm that comes through, but it's a 5 or 10 minute rain, you know, it happens all the time. So, I always tell a lot of the companies that they need to invest in like a not a baseball field size tarp, but like a big tarp like that. So, that you just cover the whole ceremony if the rain is coming in, and then pull it out, and then it's dry, and everything's ready. Never happens, you know, I started to stay in my lane.

Charlie McDermott 16:09

Gotta be hard, you've seen so much, and at the end of the day, all the vendors are the bottom line is to make that such a special day or a special event for theÖ

Matt Geiger 16:21

Correct! You know, and it's when you have one vendor, that's just that this is their job, and they're just, you know, getting the day through, and that isn't their main goal, it really affects everybody, you know, and it happens, there's people that have been doing this for 30 years are like, okay, get married, whatever and I hope to God, I never get like that, if I do, I'll hire somebody who cares more about me, you know, because I get it, you know, monotony happens, the job happens, we're all human, we get bored after a while, I totally get it and if I ever feel like that, or someone tells me that, I will sure enough, hire somebody to handle my stuff, that really cares, because it's important, if we don't care, you know, how is the bride and everybody else supposed to be taken care of. So, we really need to do that.

Charlie McDermott 17:12

You mentioned the new Discovery Centre.

Matt Geiger 17:15

So, the new Discovery Centre is awesome. So, I don't know how the billing works or anything like that. But they built it last year, and actually, during the week with called the Discovery Centre, because there's, you know, if you don't know, lovers key is a state park. So, they have kayaking, and there's like lots of river space, and there's like manatees back there, and animals and all that stuff and then it's also, you know, a beach, like over open to the ocean. So, it's a really cool State Park in between Fort Myers Beach and Bonita and so, the Discovery Centre was just built last year is when they open, and they have all these exhibits and classes and, you know, learning opportunities for people and that's like during the week, but during the weekend, when they're doing weddings, it's also rentable as a venue and what's cool about that is you can be in air conditioning, if you want, and you can be out of the elements and they set up you know, it's a really cool architectural building that has like really cool Joyceís and beams and it's really nice for the vendors to, it's a huge stilted building, and they set up the tables and everything underneath. So, you're out of the elements, if the rain picks up, you know, there's nice indoor bathrooms that are air conditioned. There's a lot of stuff there. So, now, with the rain, and everything of that happens, that's a good alternative backup plan for brides and stuff getting married there. You know, it's not ideal because it's a little up the road, but should we have to change plans earlier in the day, because, again, we try to beat out these things. If we think it's gonna rain, if it's 100% chance of rain in two hours, we're moving the wedding. Whether it rains or not, we have to, you know, we've gotten in some altercations with mothers of the bride and all this stuff, we sympathies with you, we get it, we wouldn't be doing this, if there was another option. However, if you choose to stay down here, where it's going to be storming and stuff, I can't promise that I'm going to give you my staff. Well, it's windy and blowing rain, and lightning and all this stuff to move your entire wedding in the storm. I can't guarantee that as much as I'd like to say we do anything. When we give you the opportunity to say hey, things might not go right. We should do this and it's not just the one vendor.

Usually, all the vendors come together, and they go, what should we do? We all come up with a plan together and then we, you know, relay that plan because we know we do this all the time. So, this Discovery Centre is a really cool venue, you know, they have upstairs and downstairs, awesome for the cocktail hour, you have a roof over your head, you're still outside, but you have a roof over your head. You know, you're on concrete, it's really nice out there. So, that's a really good backup plan at the White Oregon, down in Fort Myers off of the coast Steinhatchee, so that's actually where I got married and it did rain on my wedding day and we did have to change our, [Crosstalk 20:44] that just wild. So, what we did, instead of doing it out in the lawn, which is so beautiful, but we set up, they have a nice big porch out front and we didn't have a huge one and it was maybe 70 people and we set up on the porch and we got married right on the porch. I mean, we moved all the all the chairs from the dining area, out onto the porch and left the white chairs out in the lawn, we didn't even want to deal with the wet chairs or anything. So, it was kind of a bummer. But being in the industry, we handled it and you know, everybody still had a good time everybody, had their drinks and had good food and everyone was laughing and still have. It didn't even it didn't kill the mood at all, not at all.

Charlie McDermott 21:37

That you just said as you go through some of these venues, I'm thinking I would be a great episode, whether it's a next one or a future one, you've seen so many awesome venues, and for our listeners who are looking for some space. Maybe just touch on a couple of highlights. As we kind of tick if a list, that one top venues.

Matt Geiger 21:56

Yeah, of course, I'm always gonna push the ones around the preferred vendors first, [Crosstalk 22:01],right and, you know, back to what, I've talked about this a few times, you always want to work with people that know who they're working with. Right? So even if you're not working the same venue all the time, but you're working with the same DJ, and you're working with the same photographer, and you're working with the same wedding planner. I mean, if you have those same people working together all the time, I mean, they can make a successful event or a successful wedding anywhere, so, of course, I'm gonna push the places where I'm the preferred vendor at. I think we're in five places, we'll cover that in another episode. You know because it all just depends on what you want. Not everybody wants a barn wedding, you know, not everybody wants a beach wedding.

Charlie McDermott 22:53

But you know, I mean, even the backyard event, whether it's a wedding or not, it's worth because I hadn't even thought about that until you mentioned it and I thought wow, that would be really cool for my daughter's wedding or whatever, and she's getting married, and I want to put that.

Matt Geiger 23:14

It that would be a good subject. Because, you know, not everybody has to go have the $10,000 venue, and I kind of steer people away from the super overpriced ones, because, you know, for what you're getting at, I'm not going to name the venues, obviously, but for what you're getting at some of the venues that cost $10,008 to $10,000 for two days set up or whatever. A lot of them are not vendor friendly, and they don't care. So, they're really difficult venues to work, and they're so much money, but there's nothing given back, and one of my favorite venues, and again, we're gonna save these for another episode. I mean, they hook it up for the vendors, they have a back area, they have an oven on site, they have a sink on site, they have a covered area for the Gators to work in. You know that goes a long way and even if they do charge and that's something we'll touch on the venues to is the fact that some of these venues charge a percentage of the catering back to the venue they call it profit sharing or whatever. You know, when I first started, I tried to stay clear, but you know, now, if the venue gives me that stuff, I don't care if they charge us to be there. We like working there. It's an easy place we get along with everybody. It's set up for us. So, if it costs a little bit extra great. We booked a wedding and we know we're not hating it versus we're at somewhere else where it's like, they give you a garden hose and that's it, you know, I'm not kidding some of these venues $4000 or $5000 a day and they give the caterer a literal garden hose.

Charlie McDermott 25:12

No, I was gonna say that's gonna be an awesome episode. So, before you, so I know, you'll be in the venue number three or four before we know it. So, I'm going to hold you up.

Matt Geiger 25:24

Okay, yeah, that's good.

Charlie McDermott 25:25

Love this, and then next episode, or the one here right now, because you have some homework to do, put together your list and we'll talk about not only these awesome venue spaces that are available, but some of the, like you said, the thinking that goes into it, you know, before your event. So, you can begin to understand what is going to work out best for you.

Matt Geiger 25:47

For sure, you know, and then, at some point, we got to talk about something other than weddings.

Charlie McDermott 25:54

Well, I think, we can get into, because especially now, and this is September, but this episode can be listened to all year round, but maybe we can get into a little bit about the holiday event.

Matt Geiger 26:05

Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad idea, either. There's a lot of other things that we do other than weddings. So, weddings is just a big draw for us, but I mean, there's someday we do the wedding, and then we do the baby shower, then we do the sister's anniversary party, then we get stuff out after it, that's stem from it. So, that's perfect. We'll definitely touch on lots of subjects.

Charlie McDermott 26:28

I love it, as always, man, pleasure. Thanks for sharing your awesome knowledge and we'll see in the next episode.

Matt Geiger 26:34

For sure. Thanks, Charlie. Have a great day.

Charlie McDermott 26:36

Thank you for listening to the Savour food podcast. To learn more about Savour First Choice Catering, go to savourfirstchoicecatering.com or call 239-351-5547.

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