An exclusive caterer looks like the safest margin a venue can build. For a venue running fewer than a hundred events a year, it is often the fastest way to lose enquiries you never hear about. Managing suppliers well comes down to three decisions made on purpose: who gets on your list, what the client is allowed to choose, and what you earn and disclose when you make the introduction. The rest is coordination and follow-up.
This article takes the three decisions in turn, then the coordination. It leans on food-safety rules, invoicing rules and disclosure guidance rather than on habit, because habit is where most supplier problems start.
Selection: check the paperwork before you taste anything
A tasting tells you about one afternoon. Paperwork tells you whether the business behind it will still exist, and still be insured, when your client's wedding comes around fourteen months from now. Before a caterer or an AV company goes on your list, ask for four things and file them somewhere you can find again.
- Food business registration. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Food Standards Agency requires any food business to register with its local authority at least 28 days before trading; registration is free and cannot be refused, so a caterer who cannot show it has simply not done it. In the United States, ask which edition of the FDA Food Code your state or county has adopted, and how the caterer's last inspection went.
- Insurance certificates, with dates. Public liability at a level that matches what your own policy expects from third parties on site and, for any UK supplier with staff, employers' liability, which gov.uk sets at a minimum of £5 million of cover.
- A named on-site lead for the event day, with a mobile number that gets answered.
- One real event as a trial, ideally a mid-size one where a mistake would be survivable.
Price comes last. Not because it is unimportant, but because a cheap supplier who fails costs you the client, the review and the weekend, and none of those appear on their quote.
Open list, exclusive roster, or the version in between
Three models exist. Each one changes who carries the risk. The table below is the honest version, including the drawback venues tend to leave out of their sales pitch.
| Model | What the client can do | What you control | The cost you rarely mention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open list | Bring anyone | Little beyond access rules | Unknown teams in your kitchen and on your floor |
| Exclusive roster | Choose only from your partners | Quality, timing, commission | Lost enquiries from clients who already have a caterer |
| Approved list plus outside-supplier fee | Bring their own for a published fee and a signed checklist | Standards, paperwork, a fair share of the coordination cost | More admin per event |
Most venues we talk to end up in the third row, often after trying the second. The compromise works when the outside-supplier fee is public, when the checklist is the same document your partners already follow, and when nobody on your team is tempted to steer a client away from a good caterer they arrived with. An organiser usually compares three to five venues at once. A rigid roster is one of the quicker ways to be dropped from that shortlist.
Referral commissions: mechanism, disclosure, tax
A referral commission is a fee the supplier pays you for business you generated. It is legal, common, and mostly mishandled. Three things go wrong: it is agreed by handshake, it is hidden from the client, and it is invoiced as if it were something else.
Put it in writing first. A one-page agreement per supplier is enough if it states the rate or flat fee, the base it applies to (net of tax, before or after discounts), what counts as an introduced client, when it is invoiced and when it is paid. Rates vary widely by category and by how much the venue actually brings. On the venues we work with, the figure is typically somewhere between a few percent and a little over ten percent of the supplier's net invoice, higher when the venue imposes the supplier, zero when the client found them alone. Treat that as a range you negotiate from, not a standard.
Then tell the client. The FTC's Endorsement Guides were written for advertising, but the principle transfers cleanly: when someone recommends a product and has a financial connection the audience would not expect, that connection has to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. A line in your terms, or on your recommended-suppliers page, saying that some partners pay the venue a referral fee costs nothing and removes the one conversation you never want to have after the event.
Finally, invoice it as what it is: a service. In most jurisdictions a referral commission is taxable income and, where sales tax or VAT applies to services, it is charged on top. Your accountant should confirm the treatment for your state or country before the first invoice goes out. Do not copy a peer's template.
The coordination brief that keeps five suppliers off your phone
Most incidents on the day are not incompetence. They are a delivery slot nobody confirmed, a loading-bay code that changed, a final headcount that reached the caterer but not the furniture company. One shared document fixes most of it. Call it a run sheet, a function sheet or a banquet event order; the name matters less than the discipline of keeping a single version.
Per supplier, it needs to contain:
- Arrival and departure windows, plus the access route with any codes or badges.
- Final guest count, and the time after which it no longer changes.
- Power, water, rigging points and load limits for anything technical.
- Who on the venue side answers questions that day, with one number.
- What "handed back clean" means for each space they use.
Send it at least a week before. Ask for a one-line acknowledgement. Silence is not agreement.
Score every supplier within two days
Selection is a bet; the score sheet is how you find out whether you were right. Five criteria rated one to five, filled in by whoever was on site, within forty-eight hours while the details are still sharp: punctuality, brief compliance, client-perceived quality, condition of the spaces returned, and how easy they were to reach. Consistency beats sophistication. A caterer who drops below your average on two consecutive events gets a frank conversation before the next booking; a supplier who scores well for a year gets more visibility on your list and the first call when a date opens up.
Keep those scores next to the contract, the insurance dates and the commission terms, in the same place you keep the event itself. A venue management tool that links each supplier to the events they worked saves you rebuilding that memory from email every January.
Why this is worth the admin
The Events Industry Council's 2026 Global Economic Significance study, produced with Oxford Economics, counted US$1.3 trillion of direct spending on business events worldwide in 2025, and it defines a business event as ten or more people meeting for at least four hours in a contracted venue. A large share of that money moves through suppliers your clients never contract directly. You are the one who chose them.
Frequently asked questions
- How many caterers should a venue have on its approved list?
- Two or three per category is usually enough for a venue doing under two hundred events a year. Below that, one unavailable partner puts a date at risk; above it, you spread too little business across too many people to have any weight when negotiating terms. Review the list once a year and remove anyone who has not worked an event in the last twelve months.
- Can a venue charge a fee when the client brings their own caterer?
- Yes, provided the fee is published before the client signs and covers something real: kitchen access, supervision, extra cleaning, utilities. Set it as a flat amount or a per-guest figure, state it in the quote, and apply the same paperwork checklist to the outside caterer as to your partners. Keep it proportionate. A fee that looks punitive tends to end up on review sites.
- Do we have to tell clients about referral commissions?
- The legal answer depends on where you operate; the practical answer is yes. Disclosure guidance such as the FTC's Endorsement Guides in the US treats an undisclosed financial connection behind a recommendation as misleading. A sentence in your terms and on your suppliers page is enough. Clients rarely object to a commission. They object to discovering one.
