Food & Drink
Dietary requirements and evening food
Two subjects sit together on this page because they share a failure mode: both are decided late, by somebody tired, using a spreadsheet column that was added as an afterthought.
Dietary requirements are a safety matter with a legal framework behind them, and they are routinely handled as a preference. Evening food is a second catering service that gets specified in a sentence. Both deserve better, and neither takes long to get right.
Allergens, and the standard to hold a caterer to
Fourteen allergens must be identified in food served in the UK, and a caterer producing food for your guests is operating under that framework. What that means practically for a wedding is a short list you can ask for by name.
Written allergen information for every dish, dish by dish, not a general statement about the kitchen. Separated preparation, so a gluten-free plate is not assembled on a surface that has just had bread on it. A named person on the day who knows which plate goes to which seat. And a service method that does not rely on the guest identifying their own meal in a dark room after three drinks.
That last point is where most weddings fail. The kitchen produces the right plate and it reaches the wrong table, or it reaches the right table and nobody says which it is. The fix is a seating plan annotated for the service team and a card or a marker on the setting, agreed in advance rather than improvised.
Intolerance, allergy and preference are three different things
They are collected on one line of an RSVP and they require different handling. A severe allergy is a safety issue and needs separated preparation and traceability. An intolerance needs an accurate ingredient list. A preference needs a good alternative and nothing more.
Ask the question in a way that separates them, because “any dietary requirements?” produces a column that mixes coeliac disease with a dislike of mushrooms, and the kitchen cannot tell which is which.
Vegetarian and vegan, done properly
The default arrangement, a parallel dish produced in small numbers for whoever ticked the box, is the worst of both worlds. It costs more per portion, it is usually the least developed thing on the menu, and it makes those guests feel like an administrative problem.
The professional answer is to make one of the main options genuinely plant-based and offer it to the whole room. It is cheaper, because it is produced at volume rather than in tens. It eats better, because it has had the same attention as everything else. And it removes the counting problem entirely, because anybody can choose it.
The approach by budget
Build the menu so it does not need exceptions
The cheapest way to handle dietary requirements is a menu that already accommodates most of them: a main that is naturally gluten-free, sides that are separately plated, and a dessert that is not built on wheat and dairy.
Evening food at this level should be one hot, salty, simple thing in quantity. Bacon rolls, chips, a hot sandwich. A room six hours into drinking wants something specific, and it is not a second buffet.
Ask the caterer what the existing kitchen can produce without extra staff hours. Evening food that uses hands already on site costs a fraction of a second service.
Two mains, one of them plant-based
Offering two mains, one meat and one genuinely good plant-based dish, solves the vegetarian question, most of the vegan question and a good part of the dietary question in a single decision.
Take the choices in advance rather than on the day. Pre-ordered mains let the kitchen produce exact numbers, which reduces waste and cost, and it means the dietary plates are counted rather than improvised.
For evening food, one hot item and one thing for the vegetarians is the working specification. Anything more elaborate is eaten by fewer people than you expect.
Match the dietary plates to everybody else’s
The generous standard is that a guest with a requirement receives something visibly equivalent to what everybody else has: the same number of components, the same presentation, arriving at the same moment.
That takes a conversation with the kitchen rather than money, but it does take kitchen capacity, which is why it belongs at this level. Ask specifically what the gluten-free version of each course looks like, and whether it arrives with the rest of the table.
Where the spend stops paying is on an elaborate evening menu. However good it is, it is eaten by a diminishing proportion of a room that is dancing, and the leftovers are the largest of the day.
The allergen rules your caterer is working to
Fourteen allergens must be identified in food served in the UK. Reading the official position makes it much easier to ask a caterer the right questions.
Read the allergen guidanceWhat evening food is actually for
It is not a second meal. It is a sobering agent and a punctuation mark, and it does three jobs: it soaks up alcohol, it gives people who have been dancing a reason to sit down for ten minutes, and it signals the last phase of the evening.
Judged on those jobs, the specification is obvious. Hot, salty, easy to eat standing up, available for a window rather than served as a sitting, and enough of it that late arrivals from the dance floor are not looking at empty trays. Anything that needs cutlery, a table or a plate balanced on a knee is the wrong answer.
Timing matters as much as content. Too early and nobody is hungry; too late and half the room has gone. Somewhere around two to three hours after the meal, and before the last hour of music, is the working window.
What actually makes the difference
- Separating allergy from preference at the RSVP. One question that lets the kitchen treat a safety issue as a safety issue.
- A named person on the day who knows which plate goes where. Most failures are delivery failures, not kitchen failures.
- Making one main genuinely plant-based. Cheaper, better and it removes the counting problem.
- Evening food that needs one hand. Anything requiring cutlery is not eaten by people who are dancing.
- Using the kitchen that is already there. Evening food specified around existing staff hours costs a fraction of a second service.
Common mistakes
Collecting dietary requirements in one free-text box
It is the easy way to ask, and it produces a list mixing severe allergies with dislikes that the kitchen cannot safely interpret.
Instead: ask separately about allergies, intolerances and preferences, and pass all three to the caterer as given.
Leaving the guest to identify their own plate
It seems like a reasonable safeguard and it puts the responsibility on somebody in a dark room who has been drinking.
Instead: annotate the seating plan for the service team and mark the setting.
Ordering one vegetarian dish for a handful of guests
It costs more per portion than the main menu and is usually the least developed thing on it.
Instead: make it a full option available to everybody, which is cheaper and better.
Treating evening food as a second buffet
It is specified like a meal, priced like a meal, and eaten by a fraction of the room that ate three hours earlier.
Instead: specify one hot, salty thing in generous quantity, plus one option for vegetarians.
Forgetting the suppliers and the children
The photographer, the band and any children present all need feeding, and none appears on the guest catering count.
Instead: count them at the start and ask what the caterer charges for a supplier meal and a child portion.
The five questions worth asking the caterer
Will you provide allergen information dish by dish, in writing. How do you separate preparation for a severe allergy. Who on the day knows which plate goes to which seat. What does the gluten-free version of each course look like, and does it arrive with the rest of the table. And what can the kitchen produce for the evening without additional staff hours.
Five questions, ten minutes, and they cover the part of catering where a mistake matters most and the part where money is most often wasted. A caterer who answers all five without hesitation is one you can rely on for the rest of it too.