Bringing your own food when you have a caterer

I would check with both the caterer and the venue. Most venues that allow you to bring your own food require the food to be provided by a licensed caterer due to liability issues especially during a pandemic. I would also make sure your caterer is okay with you supplying some of your own food. You'd hate to buy these things and then anger your caterer because you didn't speak with them first. Also because of Covid I'm not sure how comfortable guests will be eating food that wasn't supplied by a professional or eating off a tray that a bunch of other people are touching.

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I second all of this!

Definitely ask them. Many have no issues because they know you're on a budget, and that's the beauty of a blank slate venue.

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Also agree with all of this! Best thing to do would be to ask your caterer + venue

This is a question for the caterer - at the very least they won’t want to do any clean up or provide dishes for food they don’t provide. There may be concerns that if guests became ill from food you provided, they could get the blame, that sort of thing.

Is your caterer also your venue? I think this is more of a venue question, rather than a caterer. If you're paying an outside caterer to come in to your event, I would assume they will only cater what you ask them to. If your venue allows outside food, I would double check that you're able to bring in food from an unlicensed caterer. If you can, it's not up to your dinner caterer to decide who provides your cocktail hour appetizers - I would assume?! I may be wrong.

My venue doesn't offer any catering, but requires that we have event insurance, so we can bring in any food (licensed caterer or not) and neither we, nor the venue is held liable. We hired a caterer for dinner, and a completely separate one to create our cocktail hour grazing table. But that freedom is per our wedding venue!

View Quoted Comment Thanks so much to everyone. I definitely have a venue who doesn't provide any food, my caterer is separate. I will check my venue contract to see if there is requirements on licensing for catering though because I am not sure on that, I know we did fir alcohol but I'm not sure on food.

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Call and ask because not every contract is easy reading to understand. Nearly all venues require licensed catering to keep with food safety laws from the health department.

My catering contract specifically states I'm not allowed to bring in any other food or beverage item other than desserts.

View Quoted Comment You really should check your catering contract too. They provided the quote based on other costs than food - dishes, serving, clean up. If the other food is going to be eaten at the same time as the food they cater, that is very likely not going to be ok with your caterer. Most are not on with bringing extra food other than wedding cake. And even then, there is usually a charge to cut and serve.

You need to clarify this with your caterer. Whether or not it is in the contract isn't necessarily going to matter if there is a health code regulation governing this.

I work at a college and we typically cannot mix and match food from our on campus dining/catering service and other vendors. We can purchase ready-serve food from outside vendors (like ordering pizza) or our catering service, but not offer both at the same event. We can use our catering service and provide pre-packaged food (like bagged chips) but cannot combine with homemade goods. This is because if a person were to get sick/food poisoning there would be no way to know what caused it, and the catering company could be blamed and legally liable for food that came from a difference source.

Granted its pretty common for catering companies to cater all of the savory food at wedding but for the couple to use a separate baker for their cake, so I would just call your catering company and ask what their policies are.

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I am aware some contracts specifically state you cannot bring in outside food, as my original post said " I didnt see anywhere in the caterers contract anything saying we can only use them exclusively or cant bring our own food".