Home Catering for Private Clients in Mallorca

What drives the price of catering at home in Mallorca is less the menu than who lays the table and who clears it afterwards. These are the current bands by format.

Twenty guests eating buffet style at home come to €700 to €1,300, and fifty with a full menu and waiting staff to €1,750 to €3,250. A high-end plated menu is a step above: the same fifty covers reach €2,500 to €5,000, more than €80 a head, which on this island means a villa, full service and a high-season date.

A delivery-only order arrives finished, in trays or containers meant to go straight onto your table, with reheating notes for anything served warm. There is no staff and no hired crockery, and the clearing up is yours: it is what most holiday groups choose.

Pay for canapés with set-up and you are paying for presentation: platters arranged, food stations built, linen laid and, in most cases, the crockery hire. A full menu with waiting staff turns the house into a dining room:

• Waiting staff and a service lead, counted at one per 10-12 guests for a plated menu and one per 20-25 for a standing reception.
• Crockery, glassware, cutlery and furniture, hired in and taken away again; on a drop-off you use your own plates.
• Set-up, service throughout the meal and a full kitchen clean-down.
• A bar, if you add one: €10 to €20 per head for the basic option and €25 to €40 for the premium one. On a drop-off you buy the drinks yourself.
• Live cooking where there is room for it, including a paella finished off in the garden.

Home catering is judged in your own kitchen, and few kitchens were built for it. Before asking for quotes, measure the working surface, check the electrical supply and see whether there is an oven and a free fridge. Then ask:

• Whether travel, hire items and clearing up sit inside the price or are added on top.
• The minimum order, normally 15-20 covers, with some companies not going below 50 for a major celebration.
• How late you can still change the final head count.
• Allergies and intolerances written into the menu rather than agreed verbally.
• The deposit, usually 20-30% of the quote, and whether the figure includes VAT: catering is taxed at 10%.

Companies on this listing that work in private houses and rental villas include Private Chef Mallorca, Private Cooking Mallorca, Sabor Mallorca, Delle Vedove and Garmendia Catering. Each listing carries the contact details the company has supplied and, where there are any, its guide prices and live offers with an expiry date; rather than writing to them one by one, the quote form puts your request in front of several at once.

Most of these caterers are based in or around Palma, which is the area their listings declare, so the first thing to confirm is how far out a company will travel; from there, distance tells. Palma, Calvia and Marratxi normally sit inside the quoted price; Pollensa and Alcudia in the north, Soller over the Tramuntana, Arta in the east and Santanyi and Campos in the south tend to carry a travel supplement. Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera come with a logistics surcharge.

Rental villas and country houses are their own chapter: if the house cannot supply enough power for a support kitchen you will need a generator, €300 to €600. In a Palma flat the problem is reversed: parking and carrying everything upstairs.

A delivery or a brunch with no set-up can be organised in 48-72 hours, and a private chef wants a week of notice. From May to October diaries fill up and peak dates carry a 25-40% surcharge.