How Will You Serve Food at a Memorial?

From family style and buffet to plated and passed, how do you choose the right type of food service for your loved one’s memorial after a cremation service in Fulton, IL? What you serve and how you serve it have a big impact on your guest’s enjoyment, making food a big pressure point in service. How do you choose the right food? Start by deciding how you want the food to be served. The most common options are plated, buffet, food stations, cocktail, and family style.   

The most traditional memorial food style, plated dinners are when the guests are served individual, pre-portioned plates for each course. Generally, guests select their preferred main course dish from a list of options in advance the memorial. There are many good things about plated dinners, such as that they limit food waste, and they have a fancier feel. However, plated dinners can cost more than other styles as they take more staff to make and serve. They also take more planning time as you have to carefully place each guest to make sure they get the food they ordered.  

What about family style? Family style is a sit-down dinner in which waiters bring large portions of food to the table and guests serve themselves like they would at home. This allows people to select the food they want and the quantity they want, and also makes the dinner feel more social and less formal. However, you do need large tables to accommodate big serving platters, and family style can be expensive.   

You could also try cocktail style or buffet. Instead of a sit-down meal, you can have small, passed hot and cold items served on platters by waiters. This lends itself to small venues and more intimate memorials, but guests might be disappointed if they were expecting a big meal. Usually served on long tables, buffets offer up many food options for guests to self-select, from meat and fish to pastas, salads, and other sides. Buffets are usually popular for memorials with large numbers of guests or those that want to offer lots of different food options. Buffets are great as they cater to many different tastes and are generally cost effective. However, buffet lines can get very long, slowing down the evening.   

Finally, there are food stations. Similar to buffets, food stations are placed all around the reception hall with different sections at each one. You can have a pasta, raw bar, carving, or dessert stations, or any other kind you can think of. People tend to enjoy the ability to mingle and select their own food, and the number of stations keep lines short. However, stations require a large space and lots of staff.  

As a Red Lion, PA cremation service provider, we have years of planning experience at your disposal and are honored to do whatever we can to help you. Call or visit us today to learn more about what we can do for you in your time of loss or preplanning.