When I started catering events in Melbourne, I assumed the hardest part would be the food. It was not. The food was the easy bit. Everything that actually went wrong happened around the edges, in places I had never thought to look, and it took several expensive evenings for me to learn that.
The first lesson was about loading docks. Southbank venues have access windows that close hard, often around four in the afternoon, and no amount of pleading will reopen them. Turn up late with a van full of hot boxes and you are carrying everything up a fire stair by hand. We now walk every venue before quoting, checking access times, power points, cold storage and clearing routes. It adds a visit to the calendar and removes an entire category of disaster.
Second lesson: a nine o'clock dessert service is a completely different job from a six o'clock one, even with identical menus. Energy drops, staff get tired, and guests are usually on their feet rather than seated. The plating technique that works beautifully at six falls apart at nine. If you are booking a late service, ask your caterer how they staff it, because a thin crew on a late dessert course is a problem waiting to happen.
The third and most useful lesson is about contingency plans. Weather, guest numbers changing at the last minute, equipment failing mid-service - all of it happens, and none of it is dramatic if you wrote a plan months earlier. Every Bonusmantle event now carries a written backup for each of those three scenarios, and the on-site lead holds a copy. It sounds bureaucratic until the night it saves you, and then it looks like the most sensible thing you ever did.
The other two lessons, if you are curious, are about honest headcounts and about never trusting a venue's description of its own kitchen. But those are stories for a longer conversation over a decent coffee somewhere in Fitzroy.
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