Paying for food tasting?!

I've heard that's quite common. I guess you don't have to choose since those will be the two that are served.

This is very common. All the caterers I have contacted required you to pay for a tasting. Honestly, be happy they are offering this to you lol. I had a terrible experience with a caterer who refused to provide a tasting, even after I offered to pay for it.

I guess I was upset because they made it seem like it was included in the package to taste the food so I was a little thrown off when they said I needed to pay.

My venue doesn't do tastings at all, you're lucky! Paying is common from what I've heard.

Pretty typical here.

Paying for a tasting is really common. They are devoting time and resources to your tasting just like to your wedding day. If they did free tastings, the price per head for an event would just be higher.

I completely expected to pay for our tasting, and my venue coordinator told us that the bride and groom taste for free and each guest they bring is $30/head. She explained that they used to do free tastings but couples would come with huge parties and all expect to eat for free. Costs add up!

Yes I have to pay for mine as well. Didn't know this was a thing before but apparently it is common.

I was lucky enough not to have to pay for our tasting (and they gave us a lot of food too). But it is more common to have to pay, than not to. I encountered this when I was shopping around for my bakery. I couldn't believe what some bakeries charged to taste cake.

Oh wow! With what we are paying I would have been very upset. Our package includes tasting for up to 4 people, although now thinking about it they didn't specify the amount of tasting *Begins to email venue*

Our package included our tasting. We can bring up to 4 total people, but no more, and we can taste up to 8 of the entree options, then choose up to 3 to serve.

It is weird to only get two options at a tasting to me. I didn't have to pay at any of my caterers and I was sent home with doggy bags full of food. I did have the ability to choose between any caterer I wanted though so maybe when that is your venue's food they figure you have no choice so no sense in wasting food on someone that doesn't have the choice to not use them or not right?

Its also pretty standard here. A lot of the places we visited you had to pay for your tasting, for the same reason that Jacqui mentioned, alot of couples brought extra people.

Our venue does not charge for it but ONLY the Bride & Groom can attend. it also sucks that because our menu is so robust we dont really get to taste entrees (guest get to pick which of the 11 options they want) so I'm interested to see what kind of "tasting" ours will be.

Our venue has a tasting once a season. We can bring up to 4 people and it's $10 a person.

They set up the whole ballroom, the caterers bring staff, and there's about 100 people trying a bunch of food. 4 entrees, 2 pastas, 1 starch, and rolls. So we get a full meal. They also have different vendors set up like DJ, officiant, florists, cake. We have the opportunity to run things by our DOCs too. So it's like..an actual event. So we 100% do not mind paying the fee since they put a lot of thought and effort into making this happen. We've gone twice now, and it's a lot of fun!

I'm surprised you had to pay! We did not have to pay for tasting and were given several different things to try.

We didn't have to pay for ours but we did have to pay for additional people. We brought both sets of parents and each chose a different entree, and put them all in the middle of that table. It allowed us to sample more options.

Honestly, I sort of wish I had been asked to pay! We narrowed our catering choice to two, and they both offered a free tasting. We loved them both deeply, and the decision was really hard. I ended up feeling really badly about the one we didn't go with because they were wonderful to us. But we can't have two caterers! I think I would have felt better about it if they'd let us pay them.

Didn't have to pay for a tasting for my venue or bakery.

Our venue doesn't make us pay for the initial tasting. FH and I receive the first tasting without any extra cost. However if we do additional tastings or bring extra people then we have to pay.