FAQs
It's best to read this like one document, from start to finish.

There are three main types of caterers.

• Boutique Caterers - Custom cuisine unique to you is prepared on-site over a long day and night and more. This is us.

  • We take you and your event very personally.

  • Amazing cuisine!

  • Star chefs and well-paid staff.

  • Constant wow-comments. 

  • Deeply memorable, even decades later.

  • Goes above-and-beyond, by design.

  • We are in high demand.
    
    

• Truck-it-In Caterers - This is most caterers. We don't do this.

  • You are a business transaction.

  • Food is prepared off-site, trucked in, and served hours old from warming and/or chill boxes.

  • Cafeteria-quality food with sometimes fancy dish names.

  • Degraded, dry, soggy.

  • Novice chefs.

  • Low-paid staff.

  • "It looks rather pretty but the taste does not match."
    
    

• Drop-and-Go Caterers - Restaurants, pubs, and related prepare their everyday food off site, deliver it often no longer hot or cold, and leave most of the rest to you. This is NOT us.

  • • You are a business transaction, if that.

    • Like having everyday run-of-the-mill take-out delivered.

    • Food is prepared off-site, trucked in, and served hours old from warming and/or chill boxes.

    • "You get what you pay for."

    • Scrimps wherever possible.

    • "We're just feeding your crowd and will be gone shortly."

Please see Our Boutique Catering. It is essential information.

Here are facts to know:

• Guests will long remember just two main things about your wedding: your love and the food. The two together build permanent memories like nothing else can. Boutique Catering is exactly designed to build such memory.

• Catering is typically the single largest wedding expenditure for a wedding. The national average is $75 per diner for all types of caterers, but for boutique catering couples often invest $100 or more per diner. For gourmet individually plated dining, expect pricing to begin at $150+ per diner, depending upon your menu. There is an enormous amount of labor, love, and top skill involved in how we cater compared to others. 

• Small one-day events are private chef events and typically start at ~$255 per person. We pull out every stop. We don't usually accept private chef events at a lower rate unless you are within ~50 miles of Antigo, Wisconsin, or if they are over a period of time.

• Specificity. Your desired menu, venue, its location, and desired service style will impact costs in all cases.

• When budgeting, couples often reduce venue costs to increase the level of their cuisine, while some may reduce their guest count. Some scale back their menu or service style(s) expectations due to locked-in venue costs. We suggest you hire your caterer before locking in your venue.

• Our available slots are competitive during the Wisconsin wedding season (May through mid October). We frequently select clients from among competing requests.

• Reach out in all cases.

Chef Stephen and his carefully selected staff disperse from across Wisconsin to all parts of the state, neighboring states, and nationally and internationally. We prepare your unique-to-you cuisine on-site utilizing all of your venue's amenities and a mobile kitchen we bring. The level of cuisine from our boutique catering is unapproachable by caterers who truck in already-cooked food from off site.

The comparison is not even close. The level of dedication, labor, service, cuisine, flexibility, and other particulars that our Boutique Catering provides is similar only to dining-in at special restaurants. 

We are not "bargain caterers." The two most important things about wedding memories are your love and the food. 

Please see About Chef Stephen.

Chef Stephen has put together an extraordinarily talented and diverse team from across Wisconsin who earn every cent of their high pay. You can read some of their bios here. He maintains additional talent for out-of-state and overseas events. 

We take only one major event per week and take each extremely personally. Because of competing requests, we are selective about situations we enter, especially during the Wisconsin wedding season (May to mid-October). Typically, we choose to cater events during that time at $75 to $150+ per person. 

Because of the demand on our services we may lack time to personally respond to lower cost requests; please, don't take any offense. During other times of the year, our catering schedule is less competitive so costs are lower. 

Reach out in all cases. 

Your venue and its amenities will influence your menu and service style options. Venues with a usable commercial kitchen enable us to pull out all the stops, while venues with some sort of usable kitchen also expand your options. We also shine at entirely outdoor events but your menu options and service style options will have some limitations. 

Reach out to us if you wish assistance with selecting a venue that best meets your culinary vision and desired location! 

• As boutique caterers our practice is to cook on site, not deliver to site after a trip down the road; so, there must be space at your venue for us to set up and cook. We decline events when an insisted upon menu and service style is overly incompatible for the venue.

• We avoid events where the fire safety occupancy is exceeded, or if other serious safety concerns are evident. 

• We love everyone and deeply value the privilege of serving an open table. 

As boutique caterers, we craft each menu through close collaboration with you. This ensures a personalized and unforgettable dining experience. Prices are determined by your custom menu, your venue's amenities, event location, and desired service style(s). Our past custom menu examples offer only a small glimpse into our culinary range in varying contexts.

Our explainer gives guidance. We will discuss the best fits for your menu, venue, and event during our initial consultation. 

We suggest this formula:

(number of out-of-town invited guests x 75%) + (number of local invited guests x 90%) = estimated guest count

We approach guest count not as hitting the bullseye on a dart board but as ensuring we hit the board within a safe buffer. 

1. Your Target Guest Count. We overly prepare to make sure we hit your target guest count with a comfortable buffer. 

2. Increased Guest Count. We will accommodate an increased guest count if you notify us no fewer than 10 days before your event. It becomes much more difficult to do with shorter notice. 

3. Decreased Guest Amount. Since we will have advised you on how to do an accurate guest count, we will charge for the contracted amount minus 10% but no more. It is otherwise a significant hardship on us.

• Chef Stephen is a certified ServeSafe® Food Protection Manager and trains his team. 

• Northwoods Catering is an LLC and carries $2-million liability insurance.

Many wedding writers hungry for internet clicks-and-eyes simply do not distinguish among the types of caterers in the market; so, they write with only a partial frame of reference.

Boutique catering means not something ordered from a standardized menu. It is custom cuisine unique to you cooked on site for a large gathering. That is something that is impossible to represent by a few samples. Hence, we don't do the choreographed pageantry of a traditional "tasting." 

"Truck-the-food-in" caterers very much want you to do a "tasting" because what they will be arriving with at your event will not be, simply cannot be, as fresh or good. 

If you wish firsthand experience with our cuisine, we recommend hiring us as private chefs for an intimate gathering. Occasionally, we can extend an invitation for you and several guests to watch us in action and dine for free at an event we are catering. 

• Our usual approach is One Price. Expect zero psychological sales tactics where we give you a low per person cost and then bulk it up toward the end with slushy add-on fees, as most other caterers do. Our goal is to make things worry-free, ensure that costs are plain, and help build amazing permanent memories for you.

• Our catering inquiry form is the very best way to reach out to us. It gives us needed information.

• Schedule a consultation, if invited. If we do so, it means we are interested.

• As a chef-ran family-owned business, we don't have a secretary waiting around to take calls. We may have to do some back-and-forth to connect.  

• Review and comment on the menu proposal and pricing in Google Docs.

• E-sign the catering contract.

• Transfer an 18% retainer to secure your event.

• Pay 50% of the remaining at least 45 days before your event.

• Pay the final remaining 50% no more than 10 days before your event.

• Our office hours for new clients are typically seven days a week during late fall through early spring but only Tuesdays through Thursdays during the Wisconsin wedding season. In all cases, once you become our client we devote ourselves to you and are available via text, phone, or email seven days per week within typically 24 hours, most often immediately.

• We will have two scheduled touch-bases, one ~45 before your event, and a final one ~10 days before your event. 

• During the few days leading up to your event we will be harder to reach because we will be intensively preparing.

We closely coordinate with all third parties as team members and enjoy doing so but sometimes evaluate situations on a case-by-case basis. 

Our cancellation and rescheduling policies are industry standard. The earlier you cancel or reschedule, the better for us both. If something horrible happens that upheaves your whole event, such as death or disaster, we both agree to walk away graciously and leave one another as whole as possible.

We love to do so and can offer package deals for multi-day events, such as a Friday dinner, Saturday brunch, dinner, and late-night refreshments, followed by Sunday brunch, or some combination thereof. 

For longer spans, we are available as private chefs or under an ongoing contract. 

Our basic catering contract template is normal industry standard among boutique caterers. 

We travel worldwide as private chefs. Hiring us as for such enables us to lavish attention on the smallest of details, whether for a day, a week, a month, or more. 

As much as we love cuisine, we love people much more. We listen closely to special circumstances. 

As is the normal practice among boutique caterers, we offer custom menus and service as whole packages, not as a la carte items to be ordered from a menu. If we published menus, they would take up multiple volumes on a bookshelf. 

Chef Stephen's culinary expertise and cultural knowledge can help you create a perfect menu for your target clientele. He can also train kitchen staff on-site.

Yes! Just reach out. 

Yes, via direct contact with a named officer! We won't normally entertain inquiries through bidding contractors.