What happens to the food planned for the no-shows? Can I take it?

Our caterer was not affiliated with our venue. We had an afternoon reception with drop-off catering, so we were able to keep our left-overs.

Our caterer is in-house and they told us that we would take home the leftovers! Hmm.. Maybe I misunderstood them. I will have to re-read the contract. (Of course, the only one that I don't have scanned in and able to read online. Ugh. Only have the hard copy back home)

Now see, I don't get the "health and safety" thing...the food is cooked already. So...what's the difference between to go orders at a restaurant?

My venue donates the leftover food to a local soup kitchen.

At my venue, the rest of the leftover food at the end of the night (After dinner service) feeds the staff. The rest of that goes back to the headquarters nearby and depending on what it is, it is given to shelters and kitchens. Our company doesn't like to waste food if they can help it. But they absolutely will not let anyone take food home for the same reasons as everyone said above. Our parent company is a catering & events company and owns a few venues so we are exclusive caterers there.

In our catering bill/contract - we pay for our invited guests as well as any vendors that are there that night (DJ, videographer, photographers, etc) - the vendor meal is normally at a discounted price. We are not paying for the catering staff (but I feel like it's already "included" in the price because they also eat that night). Luckily our caterer doesn't keep the extra food - he says that we can take it home with us or we can opt to donate it. Normally, they give it to the parents because the couple leaves for their honeymoon right away - but either way, they figure "you paid for it and you get everything you paid for" - that way the couple (or close family members) have something to eat after the wedding day.

It really comes down to the venue/caterer.

We didn't meet our minimum. When talking about options with our venue, they offered to box up the extra meals for us to take home (it would never have left the kitchen, would have gone right from production to a to-go box). We decided to go with them adding an extra app instead. Because what the hell was I going to do with 25 steak and chicken dinners?

But this was just because we were paying for a bunch of extra meals. If they just happened to cook extra, we would not have been able to take it home. We did family style, so there was extra food in a lot of the platters on the tables. We were not able to take that home.

Because events you are there 4-5 hours and taking food home after its been sitting out can cause food born illnesses and cause a lability issue to the caterer and that is not a risk they want to take with your health and their reputation.

Because events you are there 4-5 hours and taking food home after its been sitting out can cause food born illnesses and cause a lability issue to the caterer and that is not a risk they want to take with your health and their reputation.