Catering businesses wade into their busy season

It's beginning to look a lot like catering season.

With the spring and summer wedding period behind them, caterers are gearing up for their next busy time - holiday events and parties for businesses and private groups.

“Nobody starts to think about booking for the holidays until August is over,” says Shawn Price, chef and owner of Braise Catering in Cedar Rapids. “Everyone's busy getting the kids back to school.

“But then the party talk starts. Most of our bookings have come in in the last six weeks,” he said in late October.

His company books small dinners for 12 up to corporate functions for as many as 500.

“Coming up in November we have two corporate functions booked for 400 to 500 people,” Price said.

Cooking for that number of people is a daunting task, and he employs 4 full-time employees to handle the workload, adding temporary staff to help with prep, delivery and serving as the need arises.

“I'll add 7, maybe 8 temporary workers to help out,” he said, “but my staff and I get quite a bit done with just the 4 of us here.”

This past summer he and his staff put in a few 20-hour days to complete prep for a couple bookings.

They have a busy weekend coming up during which they will prep and cook for a party on Friday, and 3 different events on Saturday.

“That's four different menus for anywhere from 60 to 350 people,” he explained. “It can make it complicated as there is a lot of prep that goes into that many different items, but it makes each party a little more unique.”

Being prepared for the onslaught of holiday parties to come means having supplies on hand, and Price said he is always amazed at how many toothpicks they go through.

“We use a lot of bamboo picks for the appetizers we build,” he said. “We will build around 10,000 different kinds of appetizers in the next month alone, so that's 10,000 little bite-sized appetizers that I'll need bamboo picks for.”

Across town at Catering by LJ's, office manager Roxanne Braden can relate.

“We've found that a lot of people are choosing to do heavy appetizers for their party menus instead of formal dinners,” she explained. “When the customer wants 8 to 10 different appetizers available during the span of their party, that is a lot of appetizers.”

Catering by LJ's keeps on 6 full-time employees, with a list of part-times who are brought in for large parties. Especially big events can require 10 to 20 to help with the prep work, Braden added.

LJ's caters for private parties ranging from as few as 10 up to 100, in addition to their large corporate clients, many of whom are repeat customers.

“A lot of our clients booked us last year as soon as we'd finished their party,” she noted.

“Come mid-November we are pretty much booked from Thursday through Saturday every weekend into January. A lot of businesses have started booking their holiday parties in January after things have settled down,” she added.

“Our Italian crustinis that we did at the Iron Chef Competition is one of our specialties, and a customer favorite that is requested over and over,” she said, “as well as our bacon-wrapped scallops and shrimp cocktail. We go through cases and cases of them.”

Braden estimated holiday party bookings make up approximately 20 percent of the company's overall business.

“That depends, too, on how the wedding season went,” she added.

Alex Hadjis is chef and owner of the Katering Kitchen, the company he started in 1995 that offers a variety of entrees, appetizers and desserts with a Mediterranean-Greek emphasis.

The caterer has served as many as 2,000 at one event.

Preparing dill meatballs or Cajun-style shrimp for 300 takes a bit of doing, and the Katering Kitchen adds temporary staffing during peak times. But normally 3 to 5 full-timers handle the culinary needs.

“We might add 3 or 4 additional people for our busy season,” Hadjis said.

“Christmas time is a very busy one for us,” he said, estimating that the holiday season makes up 15 to 20 percent of their overall business. “Traditionally the hors d'oeuvre menu becomes our strongest menu during the holiday season.”

One popular item is the smoked salmon.

“We special order a 7- to 8-pound salmon that we skin and then frost with a dilled cream-cheese spread, topped with roasted slivered almonds to give it that scaled look,” he explained.

“We'll go through 25 to 40 of them during the holiday season, depending on the year and what people are looking to do for their parties.

“We are not really huge on baking decorated cakes or things like that,” Hadjis added. “But we do bake the rolls and fruit tortes that we use on our dessert trays.”

And the baklava.

“We go through a pretty good share of baklava during the holiday season,” Hadjis confided. “We probably go through 1,000 pieces.”

He paused, as if to recalculate that figure.

“It might even be a couple of thousand of pieces - just in December alone.”