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

There are three main types of caterers. 

1. Bespoke Caterers - Custom cuisine unique to you is prepared on-site over a long day and night and more. Key phrases: amazing cuisine, star chefs and service staff, deeply memorable, goes above-and-beyond, constant wow-comments.   

2. Truck-it-In Caterers - Cafeteria-quality food with fancy dish names is prepared off-site, trucked in, and served hours old from warming and/or chill boxes. Key phrases: sub-par cuisine, novice chefs, low-paid staff, it looks rather pretty but the taste does not match.   

3. Drop-and-Go Caterers - Restaurants, pubs, and related prepare their everyday food off site, deliver it from warming and/or chill boxes, and leave most of the rest to you. Key phrases: Degraded. We are just feeding your crowd, we will be gone shortly, you get what you pay for.

Please see Our Bespoke Catering. It is essential information and where we explain so much.

• 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. Bespoke catering is exactly designed to do that.

• Catering is typically the single largest wedding expenditure for a wedding.

• Your specific menu and desired service style will significantly impact cost, as will your venue's food service amenities and event location.

• The national average amount that couples invest in wedding catering is $75 per diner. 

• Couples routinely devote over $100 per diner. 

• For gourmet individually plated bespoke dining, expect the $150 per person range. 

• We have more cost flexibility for a casual backyard-style BBQ nearby. 

• Slots are competitive during the Wisconsin wedding season and we are selective.

• Some couples reduce their guest count to amp up the level of their cuisine. Some adjust their menu or service style(s). Others may lack such flexibility.

• 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 set up on site. The level of cuisine from our bespoke catering is unapproachable by caterers who bring in food made off site.

The comparison is not even close. The level of dedication, labor, service, cuisine, flexibility, and other particulars that our bespoke catering provides can be approximated only by dining-in at very special restaurants.

We take on only one major event per week and take each very personally. We are selective about situations we enter during the main Wisconsin wedding season from mid-May to mid-October. During other times of the year, our catering schedule is less competitive. Reach out in all situations. 

We expertly cater events from luxurious indoor resorts to rustic outdoor settings but advise that your venue and its amenities will influence your menu and service style options. Outdoors works, venues with a usable kitchen of some sort expand your options, while venues with a usable commercial kitchen enable us to pull out every stop. We can assist with your venue selection, if you reach out to us first.

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

We offer custom menus and service as whole packages, as is the normal practice among bespoke caterers. 

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

Bespoke caterers such as us are in high demand and don't do the choreographed pageantry of a "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. Many wedding writers hungry for clicks write articles that don't distinguish among the types of caterers in the market.

Bespoke catering means not something off a standardized menu but custom cuisine unique to you cooked on site for a large gathering. That is something that is impossible to represent by a few samples. 

If you wish firsthand experience with our cuisine, we can extend an invitation for you and a small group to watch us in action and dine fully for free at an event we are catering. Alternatively, you can hire us as private chefs for an intimate gathering. 

• Our 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 add-on and slushy fees, as other caterers do. Our goal is to make your event costs simple and help build amazing lasting memories for you.

• Our catering inquiry form is by far the best way to reach out to us.

• Schedule a consultation, if invited.

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

• E-sign the catering contract.

• Transfer an 18% retainer.

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

• Pay the final remaining 50% at event start.

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

• Once you become our client we devote ourselves to you and are available via text, phone, or email within typically 24 hours, often much sooner. 

• Sundays and Mondays are our usual days off, so please account for that. 

• We will have a focused touch-base ~40 and ~10 days before your event. 

• During the week of your event we may be hard to reach because we will be intensively preparing for your event's preparation.

Our catering contract template is normal industry standard among bespoke caterers. 

We love to 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 periods, we are available as private chefs. 

We suggest this formula:

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

We closely coordinate with all third parties as team members.

1. "This is everything we hoped it would be and so much more!"

2. "This is by far the best food I have ever had at any wedding, or probably anywhere!"

3. "You and your team went way far above and beyond!"

• We deeply value an open table for all. 

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

• We decline events when an insisted upon menu and service style is just too seriously incompatible with the venue.

Chef Stephen embarked on his culinary journey as a plongeur while a young teen in Florida, a position that swiftly progressed to chef de partie. By age nineteen he had ascended to sous chef, an uncommonly young age for such a role, at the same high-end restaurant that initially recognized him as a culinary savant. He has been a Wisconsinite for the past decade. 

A cultural anthropologist and linguist, Chef Stephen's culinary journey has spanned decades across both hemispheres of the globe. After an over ten-year stint as an esteemed educator in higher education, he returned full-time to his first passion as a chef. 

Chef Stephen weds cultural and food anthropology to his chef expertise. His adoption of bespoke catering is only fitting given his outlook, experiences, and skills. His foremost passion is for the people he is privileged to serve unforgettable cuisine to.

• Chef Stephen is a certified ServeSafe® Food Protection Manager and is on site with his trained team at every event. 

• Northwoods Catering is an LLC and carries $1-million liability insurance.

Chef Stephen has put together an extraordinarily talented, diverse, and well-paid team from across Wisconsin. You can read some of their bios here. He has retained additional talent including for overseas private chef events. 

We travel worldwide for private chef events as a separate section of our business. 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. 

Our cancellation and rescheduling policies are industry standard. The earlier you cancel or reschedule, the better. We mutually agree to be gracious in case of a last minute unforeseen catastrophe. Our catering contract explains.

As much as we love cuisine, we love people much more and consider all special circumstances. We yearly devote ourselves to an event or two at a discount, at cost, or for free. Reach out.

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