2024 Catering Trends: A Look at What’s Cooking
As we move into 2024, the catering world is keeping pace with the ever-evolving global landscape, propelled by fresh consumer inclinations, an altered dietary space, and groundbreaking culinary techniques. Whether it’s for the most hallowed of “I do’s,” an affair at a Fortune 500 company, or a home-cooked wedding reception, today’s caterers must adapt and provide mind-blowing solutions to a modern, multi-course equation. Here are six of the most exciting and hopeful 2024 catering trends that we can see in space, and a few bucks, inside our minds.
1. Eco-Friendliness
As with so many trends, this one goes back to Baby Boomers, who, as nostalgic committee chairs, have been memorialising the 1960s and ’70s. Expect eco-friendly catering to continue its rise, with sustainable ingredients, biodegradable tableware, and an overall reduction of the carbon footprint.
2. Plant-Based Creativity
As an increasing number of people adopt plant-based lifestyles, the demand for vegan and vegetarian catering options is soaring. Yet even the most gourmet plant-based alternatives—fried eggplant “crab” cakes, for example—may leave some guests wondering where the flavour went. To overcome this issue, plant-based catering is shifting into overdrive in 2024, luring guests with dishes like lemon-lentil soup and curried jackfruit tacos. Undoubtedly, the caterers in this burgeoning niche bring creativity to the table, building on the expertise and presentation skills we have come to expect from all good caterers. Courting guests with unexpected pairings and the bold, diverse flavours of real-deal fusion—and overcoming the major stumbling block of flavourless food—seems to be catering’s plant-based mission in 2024.
3. Interactive Food Stations
Static buffets and plated meals seem practically ancient in this era of interactive food stations—where sculpted chefs dish out freshly prepared fare to order and guests engage in the kind of Build-A-Moment that was first popularised by children’s toys. Step right up, participate, and command your freshly prepared meal to your precise specifications. That might be the most basic interactive trope, but it has other flavours in how it variously functions at events. Sushi, for instance, is a kind of perfunctory theatrical experience. You don’t really roll your own; it’s largely predetermined, highly controlled, and end-wise wrapped. Still, it looks good; it’s entertaining; and there’s enough personalisation involved that people feel like participatory dining is a thing—whether or not some of them are actually chefs in disguise on a moonlighting shift.
4. Locally Sourced Ingredients
The catering scene in 2024 will reflect a closer bond with local suppliers than ever before. Catering showcases the best of what local producers have to offer, which serves to empower the local economy. Caterers are increasingly seeking out small-scale farmers and local artisans to provide a more personalised and genuine service to their clients. The menus that caterers are working on feature locally made cheeses, bread from nearby bakeries, and meats from local ranches. These meals are meant to provide guests with an authentic farm-to-table experience that showcases the vibrancy of local food markets—and with that, the caterers hope also to capture the equally vibrant atmosphere of street food markets and the energy that comes from them.
5. Health-Conscious Menus
As an increasing number of people pay attention to their health and well-being, they are unsatisfied with what has long been the norm in food service at events—dishes that taste good but are bad for you when consumed in quantity, and that too often number among the usual suspects of poor nutrition: gluten, sugar, and excess carbs. Not us, say the caterers who have taken a cue from the nation’s better kitchens and by the end of this year plan to provide dishes featuring what they describe as “super,” “functional,” and “mindful” foods. More individualisation, too, by order of the customer. In 2024, it’s a promise to move away from yesteryear’s “one-size-fits-all” model.
6. Adventurous Desserts
In 2024, dessert is taking flight in ever more imaginative and adventurous directions. Gone are the days when the pièce de résistance was a simple cake or scoop of ice cream. Now, guests might find intricate dessert “stations” at their events, gourmet doughnuts, or deconstructed cheesecakes. Caterers are even starting to bring international flavours to their dessert menus. Think churros with exotic dipping sauces, mochi ice cream, or lavish, layered Persian sweets. It is important to note that when I say dessert is taking flight, I don’t mean that caterers are merely building up fancy, edible towers; it’s that dessert itself is becoming the showstopper. When we talk about 2024, we are talking about dessert being front and centre in memorable ways.
