First time catering help

[mchar69]

Good luck, this never got addressed:

only thing that I would be concerned about is cutting the breasts in half - you gonna do that before cooking or after? after sucks,

I myself would cut the breasts as said in half or thirds BEFORE -
less cook time, more delicious rub outside.
WHAT SAY you guys?

 

[tuPatrón]

Guys sorry I haven't responded sooner. I've been pretty busy getting things ready for this weekend. This will be my first real gig as a caterer and yall have certainly helped me a ton. Thanks so much for the suggestions, especially for the order of food on the buffet and the small plates and the chicken portions and cutting the breasts and basically every single post here as been a huge help. Some of it is so simple and brilliant I'm a little miffed that it never even crossed my mind but I guess that kind of stuff comes with experience and I have zero of that. It's why I came here. I knew you guys could sort me out.

Thanks again guys.

Good luck! Let us know how it went!

 

[Countryboyswagger]

Guys, sorry it took me so long to get back to this. Work has been wearing me out.

Anyway, thanks to yall, the wedding went farking excellent. I had plenty of food, plenty of people showed up, and since it rained on that day, I also had a good dry spot. People loved the food, I got many complements and several requests for food again. The portions worked out pretty well, they had 125 on the list and about 100 showed up (probably cause it rained all day long). I can't say enough how much I appreciate you guys throwing down all the help and hints and know-how. It really made my first real catering gig not only a success, but it made it a fun success.

I'd also like to share something else, since I've read about these guys before on this site.

The smokers I made at the house just weren't big enough to do what needed to be done. I made a call to Custom Pitts and Fabrication to try and rent a pit from them. I'd also been thinking of buying one of their A-1 competition pits and I figured that this would be a good chance to try it out first.

Sadly, they were out of rentals. I was pretty upset but the guy on the phone, (Barry? I think that's right) said he didn't want to see me put in a bind catering my best friends wedding so they'd let me borrow one of the smokers that they don't usually rent out. Turns out, it was the company pit.

I was like hey that's cool, maybe it'll cook 80lbs of pork and grill a million chicken pieces. He just laughed and said it wouldn't be a problem.

So what I wound up with, thanks to the guys there, was a 10 ft reverse flow smoker with warming rack, with about a 3 foot charcoal grill, and two gas burners. All of this was on a trailer with a huge roof and two big overhangs. I never even felt the rain. And it rained all day.
It cooked beautifully, never even slowed down, and everything went perfectly. As far as the cooking goes, the guys at Custom Pits and Fab really saved my tail.

For whatever reason, the forum isn't letting me post attachments. I'll try and get a few pictures on here of the pit.

Thanks again guys. Yall really came through for me and I appreciate it so much.

 

[KnucklHed BBQ]

Congrats on a successful cook! Hopefully they all go just as smoothly for you from here on out!

That's really awesome those guys were willing to let you use their rig, looking forward to pics - you might have to use photobucket or something similar to post pics...