Which Italian venues let you bring your own caterer?

The room is €8,000, which is inside your budget and looks wonderful in the photographs. The catering is €180 a head, it is not negotiable, and you have to use them. For ninety guests that is €16,200 you did not choose and cannot move.

Venue hire and catering are two different numbers, and in Italy the second one is frequently the larger. Most directories publish the first and are silent about the second.

The three models

• In-house, compulsory. The venue has its own kitchen and its own brigade, and using them is a condition of hiring the room. Common at hotels, restaurants with grounds, and agriturismi.
• Approved list. You choose from between three and six caterers the venue has worked with before. This is the most common arrangement at private villas.
• Open. Any caterer you like, usually with conditions and usually with fees. Rarer than you would hope, and almost never free.

Why venues do it, which is mostly not greed

Two real reasons sit underneath the rule. The first is practical: a sixteenth-century villa with a small service kitchen and a stone floor genuinely cannot host an unknown brigade with unknown equipment, and one bad caterer can damage a building that cannot be repaired.

The second is commercial and perfectly rational: catering is where the margin is. A venue that charges €8,000 for the room and controls €16,000 of food is running a €24,000 business, and its published price looks like a bargain next to the villa down the road that charges €20,000 and lets you bring anyone.

Neither reason is a problem. Not knowing which model you are buying is the problem.

The hidden fees on an "open" venue

"You can bring your own caterer" is rarely the end of the sentence. Ask about all of these before you treat an open venue as the cheaper option.

• Kitchen hire — a separate charge for using the venue's kitchen at all
• Corkage — per bottle, and it can be substantial
• Waste removal — someone has to take the rubbish off a hilltop
• Additional insurance — often required from any supplier the venue does not know
• Staff meals — you feed the caterers, the band and the photographer too, usually at a reduced rate you should agree in advance
• Overtime — for venue staff, if the caterer runs late

The wine clause, which is separate again

At estates that make wine — which in the Veneto is a great many of them — there is often a requirement to serve the house wine, at the estate's list price, and a prohibition on bringing anything else.

This can be completely fine. Some of these estates make wine you would happily choose anyway. But it is a separate clause from the catering clause and it needs pricing separately: four bottles per ten guests for a long dinner is a reasonable planning figure, and the difference between €12 and €28 a bottle across ninety guests is about €600.

What to ask, in this order

• Is catering in-house, from a list, or open?
• If in-house: what is the per-head price, what is actually in it, and what is extra?
• If from a list: may we have the list, and may we contact them directly for quotes?
• If open: what are the kitchen, corkage, waste and insurance charges?
• Is your wine compulsory, at what price per bottle, and may we bring anything else?
• What is the per-head price for supplier meals?
• Is there a minimum spend on food and drink, separate from the room?

Doing the arithmetic honestly

Compare venues on the total, never on the room. A €6,000 room with compulsory catering at €190 a head, for ninety guests, is €23,100. A €14,000 room with open catering you can source at €110 a head is €23,900 — before the kitchen and corkage fees, which might add €1,500, and after which the cheap-looking venue is actually the cheaper one.

Sometimes it goes the other way. The point is that you cannot know which without asking, and the number on the website is not the number you will pay.

Ask for the total cost for your guest count, in writing, with catering, wine, staff meals and every fee included, before you visit. A venue that will not produce that number is telling you something.