The venue coordinator's email, a week out
A country house venue emails asking for your public liability certificate, your latest food hygiene rating, a risk assessment for the event, a list of electrical items for testing records and your arrival time. They mention that the service entrance closes at 4pm on Saturdays and that the fryers cannot be used inside.
You did an event there last year. Some of this was sent then, and some of it has changed. The person who handled it last year has left. The documents are in a folder somewhere. The note about the fryers is in someone's head, or in an email that nobody forwarded to the chef, who has planned a menu with fried canapes.
Every venue has its own rulebook
Outside caterers work in dozens of venues a year: hotels, barns, marquees, museums, private homes. Each has its own requirements, and they are rarely written down in one place for you.
- Document requests vary: insurance, certificates, risk assessments, method statements, staff lists.
- Practical rules vary: access times, parking, lifts, kitchen equipment, power limits, open flames, waste removal.
- Requirements change when the venue changes its management or policies.
- The information arrives by email to whoever booked the event, and stays there.
- The team on the day finds out about restrictions when they arrive.
You are not short of information. It is simply scattered, and each event starts from the inbox rather than from what you already know.
Where it goes wrong
A missing document can mean a venue refusing access or a stressed exchange on the morning of the event. A restriction the chef did not know about means a menu changed on site, or a dish that cannot be served as planned. Arriving after a venue's access window closes wastes time you do not have.
The office also spends time answering the same venue questions every year, from scratch, and venues notice a caterer who is organised about their requirements. Being on a venue's recommended list often depends on being easy to work with.
Venue profiles attached to every event
- Each venue you work at gets a profile: contacts, access and loading windows, parking, kitchen facilities, power, restrictions, waste rules and the documents they require.
- Your own standing documents, like insurance certificates, are stored with their expiry dates, and you are reminded before they lapse.
- When an event is booked at a venue, its requirements are copied onto the event as a checklist with due dates set before the event.
- Documents that do not change are sent to the venue coordinator automatically or with one click. Event-specific ones, like risk assessments, are assigned to a person with a deadline.
- Practical rules flow onto the function sheet and the packing list, so the chef and the drivers see them.
- After each event, the team can add notes to the venue profile, such as a lift that is out of order or a better unloading spot.
| Venue detail | Where it ends up |
|---|---|
| Document requirements | Event checklist with due dates |
| Access and loading times | Function sheet and driver details |
| Kitchen and power limits | Chef's menu check and packing list |
| Team notes from last time | Venue profile for next time |
What documents you hold and what they should say is a matter for you and your advisers. We make sure the right ones reach the right venue on time.
A second event at the same venue
The next time an enquiry arrives for that country house, the profile is already there. The quote knows about the fryer restriction. The documents go out from the checklist. The drivers know the service entrance closes at 4pm. The venue coordinator sees a caterer who does not need reminding.
New staff can prepare for an unfamiliar venue by reading its profile, instead of relying on someone who happened to be there last time. And when your insurance renews, every upcoming venue that needs the new certificate can be sent it in one go.
Over a year, the profiles become one of the most useful things the business owns: a record of every venue's quirks, built by the team that works in them.
Recognise any of this?
- Venue document requests are handled from scratch each time.
- Your chef has found out about a venue restriction on the day.
- Venue knowledge lives with one or two people.
- You have nearly missed a document deadline for a venue.