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How to Plan Banquet Menus
When planning banquet menus, there are a lot of important variables you need to take into consideration apart from the factor of budget:
- Profile of Attendee: Within a group of guests, there may be many differences between the people that determine the type of menus that may or may not be appropriate. Younger guests may eat healthy or they may prefer junk food. Older guests usually don’t like anything too exotic, spicy, or heavy. Some people may be vegetarians while others won’t be satisfied unless there is a piece of beef in their plate. Keep in mind that you can predict types of foods appropriate to guests by considering their occupation, ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and geographic area.
- Cost for Labour: Make sure you avoid items that require a lot of time or a lot of people to prepare such as things that are wrapped, stuffed in pastry, or baked in parchment. Also, remember not to order sauces painted on plates or elaborate vegetable garnishes as they need many pairs of hands.
- Scheduling: You need to consider how different functions are being scheduled, so that you know what your guests will be doing before and after the meal. If, for example, they have just come out of a function at which heavy hors d’oeuvres were served you have to make sure that the meal is lighter. If, they are coming from a reception where only liquor was served, the meal should be heavier.
- Product Shelf Life: Sometimes, service is delayed and food might not hold up well. In order to make sure that this won’t happen, it is better to prefer foods that remain moist and flavourful despite service delays such as chicken, rice, green beans, filet mignon, medallions of beef, and steamed carrots. Try to avoid Eggs Benedict, carved beef items, and food served en croute.
- Ease of Production: Prefer items that can be produced and served in large quantities without their quality being sacrificed such as chicken and beef. These are easy to prepare, can be cooked in many ways and the majority of people likes them. Avoid items such as lobsters and soufflés.
- Repetition: Repetition can be either good or bad depending on the event. You need to be aware of what is being served at all the events on a multi-day meeting. This way you can plan your menus so that they won’t include repeated items. You also need to check for repetitions within any given meal. Sometimes, however, there may be a memorable event each year where guests expect the same item (filet mignon for example). But then again, they may want something different each year. By getting to know you guests, you can make more accurate predictions and determine the most appropriate menus for them.
- Traffic Flow: You should always keep in mind that the more choices offered on a buffet, the slower the line will move. For example, instead of having a buffet where guests can create a sandwich themselves you can have pre-made sandwiches cut in half so that people can still have a choice, but lines move faster.
- Menu Balance: Try to balance textures (soft, firm, crispy), colours (aim for contrast), temperatures (hot soup, cold salad, salad entrée, warm desert), flavours (sweet, salty, bland, sour), shapes and sizes (flat, round, chopped) and methods of preparation (grilled, roasted, steamed, broiled, sautéed).
- Political Sensitivities: You should check licensing issues, subsidiaries and political sensitivities of your organization to make sure that certain mistakes will be avoided. For example, Burger King requires certain drink products to be served at their events. Similarly, grapes should never be served to union groups due to union-backed boycotts.
- Regional & House Specialties: Often, guests like to sample some of the traditional dishes of the destination such as gumbo in New Orleans, or deep-dish pizza in Chicago. Ask if there is a standout specialty of the house which shouldn’t be missed.
- Variety: In order to ensure variety you need to include style of services other that the traditional American-style plated meal. You can have French service, Russian service, buffet, cafeteria-style, family-style, and box lunches. Also, when it comes to food items, consider dual entrees (beef and shrimp), salad entrees (chicken Caesar) and wraps. Potatoes can be fried, baked, roasted, and mash while rice can be white, brown, wild, pilaf, risotto, jasmine and basmati. Also, pasta can some in many different shapes and sizes. Besides the standard coffee, tea and soft dinks you can have lemonade, iced tea and bottled water. Lastly, vary the breads, juices and fruit for the continental breakfasts.
- Safe Bets: Keep in mind that men prefer beef while women prefer lighter items such as grilled fish or broiled chicken. Salmon is considered to be the most popular fish while shrimp is the most popular seafood entrée. Caesar salad is the most popular salad while broccoli is the favourite vegetable. Lastly, Italian is the most popular cuisine and cheesecake is the most popular desert.
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