Service area
BBQ Catering inSpanish Springs
The valley has no town government and no municipal centre. It is unincorporated Washoe County, and what it has instead is houses — a great many of them built in the last thirty years, on parcels big enough to hold a party. That is the whole character of the work here: private ground, a private guest list, and a host who is also the venue.
- Distance from our base
- about 36 miles northStraight-line from 5110 S Edmonds Dr, Carson City — not a road distance.
- County
- Washoe County, Nevada
- Good to know
- An unincorporated valley north of Sparks with no town government of its own — one of the fastest-growing residential areas in Washoe County.
Parties at home, on a scale a house was not built for
What a residential valley generates is life events. Graduations in early summer, receptions on family property, milestone birthdays and anniversaries, a memorial gathering, the neighbourhood party that has outgrown three barbecues pushed together. The guest list is people who already know each other, and it is almost always longer than the host first estimated.
There is no venue coordinator standing behind any of it. Nobody else is supplying tables, nobody is holding food hot while the photographs are taken, and nobody on site has done this particular thing on this particular lawn before. That is the gap a full crew fills, and it is worth being clear-eyed about before you decide to run the day yourself.
Booking a party on your own ground
The order these get settled in matters more than usual when the venue is a house, because the first two cannot be undone later.
Start with the date
A run this far north commits a crew and the trailer for the day, so the date is the scarce thing rather than the menu. Late-spring and early-summer weekends fill first in a valley this residential.
Count the guest list twice
Forty people is the published floor for a full cater and twenty for a drop-off. Parties at home tend to land well above the first estimate once families are counted, and the number sets how much serving line we bring with us.
Walk your own property
Before you confirm, stand where the food will go and look at the approach: the gate, the surface, the slope, and where a queue of people will stand. Send us what you find and the set-up gets planned rather than improvised.
What a private address has to provide
A house has to give us three things, and a kitchen is not one of them. The trailer needs a way in and somewhere to sit within reach of the serving line — a drive with a turnaround, a gate wide enough, a gravel pad. The line needs ground level enough to set tables on. And your guests need a path to it that does not run through your kitchen.
Two details catch people out at home. Parking, because thirty cars on a residential street is a conversation with the neighbours you would rather have in advance than on the day; and shade, because a summer afternoon on an open parcel has none unless somebody brings it. Tents to serve under are part of the standard package whenever the meal is outside.
Host or caterer — you cannot be both
At a house the host is on the guest list. A drop-off puts food in your hands at a fixed hour and leaves you to set a line, keep it hot, top it up and clear it on the one afternoon you are least able to do any of that. Full service starts at 40 people and it is the tier that actually takes the work away.
A travel fee applies either way — our printed terms add one to caters outside the immediate area and to drop-offs as well — so the fee is not the lever that decides between them. What decides it is whether you intend to spend your own party behind the table or in front of it.
What we usually suggest here
Full-service catering
20-person minimum for drop-off and pick-up · 40-person minimum for a full cater. Every event is quoted individually.
Travel fees are added to caters outside our immediate area.
Also nearby
- SparksWashoe County, NV · about 29 miles north of our base
- RenoWashoe County, NV · about 29 miles north of our base
Not sure any of these is the right page? Start with what a full cater involves or read the menu.
Planning something at home this year?
Send the date, a rough headcount and the address, and say a word about the ground — a lawn, a gravel yard or an open parcel all work perfectly well. We will come back with what the day would look like and what it would take to run it properly.