My partner and I met, fell in love, and decided to start a catering company. We started FIG Catering six and half years ago with the notion that we could provide high quality food and personal service for smaller events. FIG stands for “For Intimate Gatherings”– so even as we’ve grown throughout the years we’ve maintained our focus on intimate events, including weddings. We will only cater for up to 150 guests and focus on ONE wedding event a day. Sometimes we have to disappoint people who inquire about larger events, but we chose to be smaller for many important reasons (and have found more and more reasons as we’ve matured). Here are some of the most important:
We focus on food and believe in preparing as much as we can on-site at each event. In order to provide the freshest food possible, limiting the number of guests is essential. It allows us to provide creative menus and restaurant quality preparations.
We wanted to move away from the cookie cutter solutions/menus that larger catering services provided. We do each and every menu/proposal from scratch and it is the most time consuming part of our jobs. Staying smaller allows us to focus on each and every client.
We didn’t start with a specific focus to be a “green” company, but our personal sense of responsibility towards the environment influenced our business practices and soon we realized that we could make a difference by offering clients organic and locally sourced seasonal food, reducing waste, and making smarter decisions (even little ones). Reducing and recycling are much easier on a smaller scale. Many venues we work at do not have recycling on-site, but we are able to take back recyclables to our kitchen. Waste is also easier to control on a smaller scale. Finally, working with smaller farmers/producers means that their production is often limited so not having HUGE needs works in our favor.
It allows us to stay sane. I don’t like the chaos of large events; I used to work in staffing and have worked at plenty of large scale fetes with 20+ staff, multiple kitchens, and miles of walking. I am much more comfortable with a small, dedicatedstaff and a guest list where I can personally interact with each and every guest.
Whatever size your wedding is, it is an important factor to think about as it will impact your venue choice, caterer, budget, and, most importantly, feel of the day.
– Molly Schemper, 