Venue charging for a tasting?

I've heard of this before. It seems like a lot, but I think it's pretty common unfortunately.

The venues we looked at were 50/50 on this. Some charged for a tasting, some didn’t. Are you doing a private tasting? Any of the venues that offered a free tasting were a group one that they offered a few times a year. If you wanted something more specific, or private, you had to pay.

A lot of venues do this, the ones that actually DO NOT do this are in the lower half of the percentage.

I think it depends on the area. In my area most caterers don't do tastings or if you require one you have to pay a fee. My caterer wanted to charge us $650 for a tasting for up to 12 people. Their reasoning was that they do large orders for catering events and getting smaller amounts of food to cook for a tasting is much more expensive. Instead they offered an "open house" 4x a year where everyone considering booking with them or who had already booked with them could taste their food and check out bar options and whatever.

I think maybe this is something you could have negotiated before signing the contract but at this point you'll just have to pay to try it out. Maybe ask if they do an open house type situation?

@Sarah will check into if there is a group tasting, I guess I asked about a private tasting and that could explain the fee. I just seemed to find it a little strange I guess, because I hadn't really expected there to be a charge to taste what you're paying for already.

@therealJJ yeah I was actually just thinking about it, that I should have negotiated that before I signed the contract and I didn't even think to include that because I thought they would offer an event similarly to hers. My friend did an open house type of thing to try her food, and that's what I thought it'd be like I suppose.

Our venue charged us for the tasting, but I think part of the reason they do it is because they host all of their events for the year in 1 night, including holiday and corporate parties, so they don't limit the number of people you can bring but instead charge per head. Also, if they're a venue that does a lot of wedding business they can afford to scare couples off with tasting fees because they know the dates will be booked up anyway.

My venue gave us a dress taste testing. We even have about 3 more taste testing before the wedding with the same venue and it’s all free. I guess it depends where you live and the area you live in. I’m in Wyoming and my towns population is about 10K people so we’re fairly small and know almost everyone here. At least it’s about $40 for the both of you and not $650 like another PP said. I just think it’s crazy that they’re charging you when you’re spending that much. My whole wedding doesn’t even cost nearly as much as your food and beverage.

Most venues in my area do, regardless of the price per plate or the price you are looking at spending with them. ours didnt, it was complimentary, but unfortunately many do.

It's not unusual. We paid $50pp for our tasting (private tasting). This was a high end venue and we were paying a lot for the reception as well. It's just business - they need to cover food costs.

Cake tasting near me are $10-25. Not surprising.

I guess I'd just figured well of course it'd be included in the package price. Silly me.

Not unusual at all. Some places charge closer to $50. Your pricing seems very reasonable to me.

A local baker, who I met at a wedding show, just contacted me to arrange a cake tasting and they are charging $30 for that.

We paid $50 pp up to 4 people for ours.

Our career charged $175+tax for us to taste 3 full sized entrees and 3 hors d'oeuvres and a glass of champagne. However, they are ONLY a catering company- they have no restaurant that is typically staffed, so if they don't have an event going on then the chefs etc. aren't typically in, they come in specially for the tasting - so essentially we paid not just for the food but for the staff's time to come in and cook/serve. We were more than OK with this though because although they had fabulous reviews, we wanted to be certain that we liked the choices we made--- as it turns out, we kept the main entrees and adjusted the sides for 2 of them and changed one of the hors d'oeuvres, so it was more thsn worth it to us!

Charging for a tasting is perfectly normal.

I didn't have to pay for mine but I've heard some caterers do charge. I find it odd but it's not super uncommon.

I came across some that charge for the tasting, but the amount paid is deducted from your final payment. It might be worth trying to negotiate something like that.