Full Service Catering

Full-service catering means Green Apple handles the whole event — menu design, cooking, delivery, setup, staffing, service and breakdown — so you manage one vendor instead of six. We have done it across New York City for groups from twelve people in a conference room to 3,000 at a venue.

Most calls we take start the same way. Someone has been handed an event on top of their actual job. The date is fixed, the headcount is still moving, and the building has loading-dock rules nobody wrote down. What they need is not another menu PDF — it is someone to own the details.

What Full-Service Catering Includes

Every full-service booking covers the same scope, adjusted to your room and your guest count:

• Menu design. Built around your guests, your budget and what the room can actually support. Dietary needs are planned in from the start, not bolted on, and every item is labeled.
• Cooking and transport. Prepared in our kitchen under New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) oversight, following HACCP protocols, and held at temperature in transit.
• Delivery and setup. We arrive inside a defined window — not a two-hour range — and set the room before guests arrive.
• Service staff. Servers, station attendants, captains and bartenders who have worked New York rooms before, briefed on your run of show.
• Equipment. Linens, chafers, china, glassware and serving pieces through our party equipment rentals, so you are not sourcing them separately.
• Breakdown. We clear, pack and leave the space as we found it.

Events We Cater

Full service applies across everything we do. For business events, our corporate catering in New York covers board meetings, client presentations, all-hands sessions and holiday parties, while corporate event planning NYC handles the logistics around the food. Teams that need feeding on a repeating schedule use our workplace dining programs, and for day-to-day midday service there is office lunch catering NYC.

On the private side, our NYC wedding catering services run from small ceremonies to full receptions with staffed bars and plated service. NYC social events catering covers birthdays, anniversaries and private dinners, and special occasion catering handles the milestones on the calendar — showers, graduations, retirements and gala fundraisers.

If you would rather start from the food, browse our catering menus and tell us what fits.

Why the Details Matter

Catering fails quietly. The food arrives lukewarm, or forty minutes late, or short by twelve portions because the headcount changed on Thursday and nobody passed it on. Guests notice, but they rarely say anything — they simply remember the event as poorly run.

That reflects on the person who booked it, which is the part most vendors never acknowledge. An executive assistant who books a bad lunch for a client meeting is the one who hears about it afterward, not the caterer.

Green Apple has held New York City government contracts, including work for the Department of Homeless Services, the Department for the Aging and the Human Resources Administration — agencies that audit their vendors on food safety, documentation and on-time delivery. The same operating standards apply to a fifteen-person board lunch. Our corporate clients include Amazon, Morgan Stanley, Cartier and Marriott Hotels, most of whom book us repeatedly rather than once.

You get one point of contact from first call to breakdown. That person knows your headcount, your room, your dietary list and your timing, so you are not re-explaining the event to a driver on the morning of.

Dietary Requirements

Dietary needs are part of the menu design, not a substitution made on the day. We regularly build vegan, vegetarian, dairy-free and nut-aware options into full-service events, and every item on the buffet or the plate is labeled so guests are not guessing.

Two things we will tell you plainly. Our kitchen handles gluten, so while we prepare dishes without gluten-containing ingredients on request, we cannot guarantee an allergen-free environment — if a guest has coeliac disease, say so early and we will plan around it properly. And while we do hold halal certification, we are not kosher-certified. We can source certified proteins from suppliers when a menu calls for it, but if your event requires rabbinical supervision we will say so and point you elsewhere rather than take the booking.

How Booking Works

First, a short call about the date, the headcount, the room and the budget. Second, a costed proposal with a menu, a staffing plan and a delivery window — usually within one business day. Third, a walkthrough or tasting if the event warrants it. After that we confirm final numbers roughly seventy-two hours out, which is when most headcounts settle, and we hold that number.

Lead time we prefer is five to seven business days for larger events. We can often work faster depending on the format — drop-off service scales quickly, staffed events less so.

Service Area

We cater across all five boroughs from our kitchen at 1625 Broadway, and serve Long Island, Westchester, Northern New Jersey and Southern Connecticut. Capacity runs to 3,000 guests.

Event Support Beyond the Kitchen

Full-service also covers what happens around the food. We coordinate event staffing services, connect clients to floral design NYC and event photography NYC partners, and help clients evaluate venues and event spaces NYC before the date is locked. For larger productions, our conference catering team handles multi-day logistics, and our catering resources NYC page has planning guides for first-time event leads.

If you want to taste before you book, our cocktail and appetizer tasting sessions cover the reception side of a wedding or corporate event.

Get a Custom Catering Quote for Your Event

Tell us the date, the headcount and the room. We will come back with a costed menu, a staffing plan and a delivery window — not a brochure. Request your catering proposal and we will follow up within one business day.