Event catering in Ireland

Drop-off platters and trays are the simplest option: the caterer prepares and delivers the food and you serve it. They suit office lunches, small parties and anyone who wants good food without staff. Buffets and grazing tables add a bigger spread for relaxed crowds, and some caterers include table settings.

Barbecue and live-fire menus are cooked on site, outdoors, and suit summer parties and weddings. Food trucks and mobile pizza ovens work the same way: they arrive with their own equipment and cook for your guests. Plated, seated dinners are the formal end, usually with staff to serve and clear. Staffed service costs more than drop-off, and the listing says which one a package includes.

Packages for casual food, buffets and drop-off start in the €20s a head, and the lowest start under €10 for simple items. The middle half of packages sit between €25 and €40, with a median of about €29. Dublin follows the same pattern, with the middle half between €24 and €39. Seated dinners with staff, fine-dining menus and live-fire catering cost more, and the highest-priced packages are above €85 a head. Also look at the minimum order, which ranges from about €50 to several hundred euro, and at the guest range, which runs from a handful of people to a thousand.

Open a caterer, choose a package and enter your guest count. The total appears before you commit. Your card is only charged once the caterer accepts the booking. If you need something the packages do not cover, message the caterer. They can reply with a custom price inside the app, and you pay by card only when you accept it. Guest numbers can be changed up to 24 hours before the event, and the cancellation terms are shown before you pay.

Caterers choose where they travel, so each county page shows who can reach its main town. Dublin has the most choice, with six caterers. Limerick has four and Killarney has three. Cork and Galway each have a small number of caterers travelling in from nearby counties, and the pages say so.