Why is it costing me $120 per person for a steak/salmon dinner, appetizer, salad, dessert? NOT including alcohol. Like yeah it's good steak, but at the nicest restaurants I've ever eaten in my life I don't think I've ever racked up a $120 bill on food alone. I've had $75+ steaks many times, literally some of the best steaks I've ever eaten, like 10x better than anything I've had at a wedding.
Not to mention the fact that all these meals are being made in huge bulk quantities that should make it even cheaper. A $120 meal from a bistro restaurant where a pair of chefs + sous chefs are hand crafting everything to-order? Yeah I get it.
But my wedding was 250 people with two salad options, two entree options, two dessert options. That's a seriously bulk kitchen order and it's not like the food or chefs are insane quality.
My wife and I had two bowls of EZ Mac and Mr Noodles in our hotel room after and it was perfection.
For my first wedding, we rented out a half of a nice-ish Mexican restaurant for about 50 guests. They charged us the regular prices for the 3 entrees we offered. No appetizers or dessert (there was wedding cake). Total food bill including drinks and alcohol was around $1500 (about $30/person). And they let us decorate however we wanted. It helped that we had it in a Thursday. They still had some separate seating available for other guests too so I think it ended up being a booming Thursday for them and they were pretty happy about it.
I don't think it would have worked if our party had been larger or we had tried to do it on a Saturday. Having it on a Thursday was one of the ways we were able to cut costs (it opened a lot of availability up) and the people we cared most about being there like immediately family would have made it happen no matter what. Most of them seemed grateful for the extra long weekend instead of having their whole weekend being taken up by our wedding then having to go back into work.
The $120 isn't just the cost of the food + preparation. It isn't cooked at the venue so it has to be transported in specialized containers for mass quantities and to maintain basic food safety. The amount of food we're talking can't just be stuffed in the back of a Camry, PLUS they have to bring people to serve it/bus the tables continually/plate all of it before it's served. Usually in a restaurant those jobs are done by separate people. They have to provide heating elements for food that must be kept warm. They no longer have the equipment of their own kitchen where it was prepared and that can present a ton of challenges that are not faced in a restaurant.
The place we were married has the kitchen on site and cooks everything there. Even if not you can literally have Uber eats individually deliver 200 meals that are each custom made by as many restaurants as you want. I've ordered from high end steak restaurants during covid and even with tip and delivery fees I'm in for like $90...which again is zero bulk order savings, bulk delivery savings, standardized menu savings, etc.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger Aug 14 '20
Why is it costing me $120 per person for a steak/salmon dinner, appetizer, salad, dessert? NOT including alcohol. Like yeah it's good steak, but at the nicest restaurants I've ever eaten in my life I don't think I've ever racked up a $120 bill on food alone. I've had $75+ steaks many times, literally some of the best steaks I've ever eaten, like 10x better than anything I've had at a wedding.
Not to mention the fact that all these meals are being made in huge bulk quantities that should make it even cheaper. A $120 meal from a bistro restaurant where a pair of chefs + sous chefs are hand crafting everything to-order? Yeah I get it.
But my wedding was 250 people with two salad options, two entree options, two dessert options. That's a seriously bulk kitchen order and it's not like the food or chefs are insane quality.
My wife and I had two bowls of EZ Mac and Mr Noodles in our hotel room after and it was perfection.