Medellín event catering since 2019
Medellin Elite Catering cooks for Medellín events in three main ways: a staffed buffet run by our own team, trays delivered to your door, or an order you collect from our kitchen yourself. The food can be identical in all three, so the real choice is the level of help you want on the day.
This guide is for hosts weighing convenience against control: expats planning a first party in Colombia, office managers feeding a team, and families organizing a reunion at a finca. It sets out what each style includes, the lead time it needs and how many staff it brings.
Our team has cooked for events across the Aburrá Valley since 2019, from a two-person anniversary dinner to a 900-guest company year-end party. That range taught us which format works at which size, and that guidance is summarized below.
Plan your event
The quick rule: choose a full-service buffet when you have 15 or more guests and want to enjoy the party, delivery when you have a table and a host willing to lay it out, and pick-up when the order is small and someone has a car. Everything else follows from guest count, venue and how hands-on you want to be.
| Full-service buffet | Drop-off delivery | Order-ahead pick-up | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best guest count | 15 to 900 | 10 to 120 | 6 to 60 |
| Staff on site | Cooks, servers, coordinator | None | None |
| Setup and cleanup | Done by our team | You set out, you clear | You set out, you clear |
| Tableware | Ceramic plates, flatware, glassware | Compostable plates and cutlery on request | Compostable plates and cutlery on request |
| Lead time | 2 weeks | 48 hours | 48 hours |
The real gap between staffed and unstaffed service is labor and equipment. A buffet for 60 brings three servers, two cooks and a van of chafing dishes; a delivered buffet for the same group brings food in insulated carriers and a driver who leaves after ten minutes.
Mixed approaches also work. Many companies take delivered breakfast trays for a morning workshop and a staffed buffet for the closing dinner, and families often collect platters for a Friday arrival before a bigger catered Saturday.
A full-service buffet is the format most of our events use: hot food held in chafing dishes, a line guests walk along, and servers who replenish, carve and clear. It suits weddings, quinceañeras, company parties and any gathering where guests arrive hungry at roughly the same time.
Our buffet catering service explains self-serve and attended lines, menu building, line length and food-safety holding in detail. The team arrives 2 to 3 hours before service, stays for a standard 5-hour service and leaves the space clean.
Plated service is a different style: every guest receives the same course at the table at the same moment. We cover it on our wedding catering page and our dinner catering page, where most plated requests come from.
Both styles give you restaurant-quality food without staff on site. The difference is who drives.
With catering delivery, our refrigerated van brings hot food in insulated Cambro carriers and cold platters on ice. The trade-off: you lay the table and clear it, but you never leave the house.
With catering pick-up, you collect the same trays from our kitchen at a booked time slot. The trade-off: you need a car with a flat trunk and a direct route home, because hot food should be on your table within an hour.
Staff numbers depend on the service style far more than on the menu. These are the ratios we plan with, before adding bartenders.
| Service style | Guests per server | Servers for 100 guests |
|---|---|---|
| Plated dinner | 10 to 12 | 9 to 10 |
| Buffet | 20 to 25 | 4 to 5 |
| Cocktail with passed canapés | 25 to 30 | 4 |
| Bar service (bartenders) | 50 to 75 | 2 |
The ratios assume a single room or terrace with a short walk from the kitchen area. At a finca where the kitchen sits 80 m from the dining terrace, or a venue split across two floors, we add one runner per level so food keeps moving.
Drop-off delivery and pick-up have no servers at all, so the host or a helper keeps the trays tidy and refilled. If you want one person to manage a delivered spread, ask for a single attendant in your quote.
Group size changes the format, the staff plan and the equipment list more than any other factor. We have built a page for each of the four size bands we plan around, with the menus and logistics specific to that range.
Our small group catering covers private chef dinners from two guests, boxed meals for a meeting and family-style platters for a weekend at an Airbnb. The page explains which formats suit a table of six and which suit a meeting of fifteen.
Mid-size event catering is the range of birthdays, baby showers, team lunches and intimate weddings in a salón social. It compares buffets, food stations and plated dinners at this size, with staff plans and quantities for 50 guests.
Large event catering handles most weddings and quinceañeras in Medellín. The page covers how long it takes to serve 150 plates, buffet line planning and what the venue must provide in power, water and access.
For conventions, galas and company-wide parties, our large-scale event catering explains multiple buffet lines, satellite kitchens, generators and the permits public events require. Our largest single service to date fed 900 guests.
Questions and answers
Allow about 2 m of buffet table for every 50 guests, plus 1.5 m of clear floor in front of it so the queue does not block other tables. For 150 or more guests we set the line double-sided, so two queues move at once along the same tables. A 100-guest buffet therefore needs a 4 m line, or a 2 m table served from both sides.
Reserve your date
Send your date, guest count and venue through the quote form and we will recommend a service style with an itemized quote within 24 hours. Questions before you fill it in? Email info@medellincatering.com.