Mass Dining/Banqueting question?

Gizmo · #1 06-22-2012, 06:56 AM

This has been bugging me for quite a while. Everytime I do a 'banqueting' event I see something that drives me mad.

The venues get a full list of who is having what and what table they are on. They seem to nominally assign one or two waiters to each table. So why don't they put the two together? That way they could say "Andrew, you have table 1, you need 2 duck; 1 chicken;1 veg tart. Then get to the table and saying "right, who is having the chicken" still happens but at least they have an approximate idea of what they are going to need and I would think would be quicker to get everyone served and sorted.

Instead its a nightmare of waiters leaning over everyone going "chicken? chicken?" and wandering around about 4-6 tables with every other plate and taking 30+ minutes to actually get everybody their food for that course. In the meantime they are waiving hot plates around my ears, leaning over me and waving food smells under my nose so by the time they actually get food to us and we can eat most of us are feeling ill.

I realise that people will change seats so you can't do that. I realise you might have the occasional person who changes table even if told not to so it won't be perfect.

So what am I missing that makes this so difficult to even try to do?

FYI - I should point out that I do have crowd phobia and small space phobia so I realise that some people won't have as much trouble with plates hovering around ear level or being leaned over. However for me I want to bolt when it happens.

Jester · #2 06-22-2012, 08:32 AM

The only answer I can give you (and I was once a banquet server) is that, generally speaking, the only thing the venue gets is the total number of each dish, i.e., if there are 100 people, the venue will be informed that there will be 40 chicken, 25 steak, 20 duck, and 15 vegetarian dishes. They are not notified of WHO will be eating WHAT, nor where each person will be sitting. Also, in most banquet situations I worked, other than the head table, there was no assigned seating per se, but merely open tables. True, there were some events where there was assigned seating, but most were not. Now, with the events that did have assigned seating, they probably could do what you are saying, if the venue was supplied with an itemized list, i.e., Sam Smith has duck, Liz Smith has steak, etc. But I have never seen such an itemized list be provided.

Hope I've answered some of your questions.

PepperElf · #3 06-22-2012, 02:13 PM

Quote:

FYI - I should point out that I do have crowd phobia and small space phobia so I realise that some people won't have as much trouble with plates hovering around ear level or being leaned over. However for me I want to bolt when it happens.

I personally nicknamed it "cluster phobia". Cos sometimes - if I'm very annoyed or irritated - I hate to have clusters of people crowded up around me. Getoff! yarrrr!

Ellain · #4 06-22-2012, 02:43 PM

Way back when I served for banquets (over a decade ago, I feel old!) we almost always knew how many of which dish was to be served at each table. Once in a while, the place cards were color coded, which we all loved. What you describe does seem really chaotic!

Gizmo · #5 06-22-2012, 02:49 PM

Thanks Jester. Hmm... I know at least one of the events that I know of seeing this problem at definitely gives the full list of Names & Food over and the Venue themselves set the tables up with the names etc. Especially since they've known names & table specifically for X dish with Y alteration - although that could be a special case. (and I'm sure one of the weddings did ensure the venue had the full list lately too). Thanks for pointing that out though, it is possible that other events didn't pass the full list over.

Yeah Pepper Elf, cluster phobia is definitely a good name for it - I don't even have to be feeling crappy already for it to kick in.

Yeah, Ellian, It feels really chaotic as an attendee at the events! The staff always seem a bit harried about it as well - especially when towards the end you end up with about four of them asking you "chicken? Chicken? Chicken?" every few seconds and its obvious everyone at the table is getting fed up of saying "no we only need 1 veg tart on this table now...". I thought someone somewhere must do "my" idea - nice to know it does happen!

An odd mass Dining thing I had was a place that asked you "and will you be having tea or coffee Ma'am?" and then when you said "yes" would repeat themselves - they wanted to know which people were having so that the spoon could go in the cup for coffee and in the saucer for tea. Of course no one realised this until the third time or so they were asked. Its not a bad idea but for some reason there was no clear indication of the "tea OR coffee?" bit being more important than the implied and more usual "do you need a cup? bit! (once we wised up though we were ok about it)

Andara Bledin · #6 06-22-2012, 04:48 PM

It seems to me that it would be far less chaotic to have someone come out and poll the tables about 10 minutes before the food starts being served.

That way, each food-bearing waiter would know exactly which table got which items, and the food would spend much less time getting potentially contaminated, and the entire event would look a lot more elegant.

^-.-^