Strike, waste and the handover

The handover is the part of the contract nobody reads and every host remembers. A dinner ends at midnight; the evening ends when the last crate is in the van, the kitchen is cleaner than it was found and somebody has taken the rubbish away. Agree all of it in writing before the date, because at one in the morning nobody negotiates well.

Waste

The professional standard is simple: everything the caterer brought in, they take out. Packaging, used oil, bin bags, food waste, flowers and broken glass. In a city apartment this matters because your building’s bins cannot absorb a dinner for twenty four; in a rented villa it matters because the rubbish collection is on Thursday and you leave on Sunday.

Rentals

Count in, count out, both in front of the driver, and photograph anything that arrives damaged. Scrape and stack glass and china rather than washing it unless the contract requires washing, and keep breakages in a separate crate so the count is honest. Five per cent breakage is normal; twenty per cent is a conversation about how the evening was staffed.

The kitchen

A good crew leaves the kitchen better than they found it: surfaces wiped, hob clean, fridge restored, dishwasher emptied, floor swept, bins out, and a short note of anything broken or used from your own supplies. Hosts who hire the same chef for years almost always describe this hour, rather than the food, as the reason.

Write the strike into the service timeline and into the quote, so the hours are paid for rather than resented.