Considering dietary requirements as part of your event planning process allows every guest to have food options they can enjoy. Guests appreciate this attention to detail and care for their needs, making your event more successful. Several occasions call for catering, from corporate parties to weddings to holiday events. Here’s how to adapt your catering menus to various dietary requirements and make your event even more special for every guest.
Before looking into catering options for your event, consider the most common dietary requirements, including:
Some dietary requirements are due to health reasons, like food allergies. There are eight major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, crustaceans, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, soybeans and wheat. Guests might also have cultural or religious preferences where they avoid alcoholic drinks or certain types of meat, like pork or beef.
Another way to assist with planning your event catering is to gather dietary information from guests ahead of time. When you have the details before the event, you can plan around specific requirements rather than guessing. For a formal event like a wedding, you might send out RSVPs with questions about dietary restrictions.
If you are hosting a work event, you can send a company-wide email with a survey to ask each employee about any applicable dietary needs. You can then keep this information on file for future events.
Once you have an idea of your guests’ dietary requirements, you can begin planning the menu. When choosing a caterer, ask questions about menu customization and how they manage dietary restrictions to discover whether they’re the right fit. Some options that a catering company may offer to account for special requirements include:
You can also explore a caterer’s existing menus to see typical options for different diets. Some catering services even offer tasting sessions to give you a better idea of the menu and its flavorful choices for all guests.
Catering By Design offers upscale catering services for any event across the Raleigh-Durham area. We have a selection of customizable menus that allow you to account for any dietary restrictions at your event. Contact us today to start planning your event menu.
