If you're planning a wedding or a corporate event and you're searching Google for catering, you already know the pain: five restaurants, five menus, five delivery windows, and one guest list that keeps changing.

The quotes you get online usually miss four details that decide whether the food actually shows up right:

1. Service style, not just headcount. 80 plated dinners is a different operation than 80 grazing stations. Same guest count, totally different kitchen load.

2. Dietary split, not a footnote. "Some vegetarian" is not a number. Give the kitchen exact counts or you will run out of the one dish everyone wants.

3. The real timeline. When guests arrive, when they eat, when speeches start. Food sitting 40 minutes because the program slipped is how good catering looks average.

4. Venue rules. Loading dock hours, no-open-flame policies, elevator size. This is where drop-off jobs die on site.

Put those four in the first message and a serious caterer can actually price the event. Skip them and you're comparing fake numbers.

That's why we built catering.co around one booking instead of five phone calls. If you're a planner or a couple, start with the event date, guest count, venue, and whether it's a wedding or corporate — then we handle the restaurants.