Course Hawaii
Wedding Caterer
+1 808-371-6786
Standalone profileThe Menuevents on the kitchen's roster
Standing Servicepractice overview
Course Hawaii brings catering service in Honolulu, with corporate events and office catering on the offer, plus wedding receptions and custom menu planning.
Local providers vary widely in how they document their work, and that variance shows up months later when something needs follow-up.
Course Hawaii appears among catering service listings for Honolulu, HI.
The summary below is editorial — public-source cues plus call-prep questions, not service endorsements.
Best-fit use cases (3): Corporate lunches, meetings, and office events; Wedding receptions and private celebrations; Cuisine-specific event menus.
If your situation does not fit, ask whether they actually take that kind of job before booking.
Service indicators documented for this listing: corporate events, wedding catering, menu planning — 3 distinct cues.
None of these confirm field execution; verify by asking the dispatch line for recent jobsite examples.
Where Honolulu sits within HI matters: neighborhood age, code requirements, and seasonal demand shift the dispatch calculus.
Ask the dispatch line what zip codes they cover most.
Ask whether the provider leaves a written report after each visit listing what was done, what was found, and what to watch next.
Without that, the next provider has to re-diagnose from scratch.
House Notesfrom the kitchen's own page
-
Hours Minutes AM Style of Service Event Location Budget Number of Guests (Kids Separate) Dietary Restrictions Tell Us More About This Event Submit Hungry? Let us handle the food while you focus on making memories. toda
From their site
Mise en Placebooking facts
- Phone+1 808-371-6786
- Sitecoursehawaii.com
- Kitchen base1130 N Nimitz Hwy Suite C-130, Honolulu, HI 96817, United States
- SpecialtyWedding Caterer
- Service areaHonolulu
- Profile tierStandalone
- Data score92 / 100
Regional Practicepermits & service customs in this region
On the Pacific seaboard — California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Hawaii, and Arizona — every catered event must come from a permitted commercial kitchen; home-kitchen catering for a paying event is illegal in most counties. ABC license rules vary by city, and off-site bar service usually needs a Type-58 caterer's permit. Travel-fee surcharges scale with mileage outside the kitchen's home county. Plan to pay an 18 to 22 percent service charge on top of the food and labor totals.
Consider Before You Callfive questions to bring to the booking
- What's the minimum headcount for a corporate booking, and is there a separate weekday vs. weekend rate?
- How far in advance do weddings book up, and is a tasting offered before the contract is signed?
- Do you handle the full menu-planning consult, or do we work with an outside event planner?
- What is included in the per-head price — appetizers, dessert, non-alcoholic drinks, gratuity, taxes?
- Do you carry a current health-department permit and a certificate of insurance the venue can request?
Table Questionsfrequent asks at the booking
- How is catering priced — per head or per dish?
- Most catering is priced per-person ("per-head") for a fixed package: appetizers and main and dessert and non-alcoholic drinks. Service staff, rentals, and the bar are usually separate line items. À-la-carte and weight-based ("market price") pricing is common at high-end and cuisine-specific kitchens. Confirm whether tax, service charge, and gratuity are inside the per-head number before signing.
- How far ahead should the kitchen be booked?
- Wedding caterers typically book six to twelve months ahead for prime spring–summer dates. Corporate events book two to four weeks ahead, sometimes shorter. Drop-off catering for office events can be twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Last-minute bookings limit the menu, since the kitchen has to source from what is already in their order rotation.
- Drop-off versus full-service — what is the practical difference?
- Drop-off means the kitchen delivers food (hot or cold) and leaves — no servers, no bar, no on-site staff. Full-service brings servers, bartenders, an event captain, and sometimes rentals (linens, glassware, china). Full-service typically costs thirty to sixty percent more than drop-off for the same food.
- How is the menu tasting handled?
- Most full-service caterers offer a tasting before the contract is signed (sometimes free, sometimes a credit-on-booking fee). The tasting is a curated four to six dish version of the proposed menu. Bring the decision-makers and write notes on each dish; the tasting is to lock in the menu, not redesign it from scratch.
- What is the difference between a wedding caterer and a regular caterer?
- A wedding caterer specializes in reception dining at scale — typically fifty to three hundred guests with a fixed timeline (cocktail hour, plated dinner, dessert station). Wedding caterers often have venue partnerships, contracts written for wedding contingencies, and staff trained for the wedding-day flow. A regular ("event") caterer covers a broader range of events but may not be staffed for the long, multi-stage flow a wedding needs.
- Tipping and service charges — how do they work?
- Service charge (typically eighteen to twenty-two percent) is added by the caterer to cover front-of-house labor; it is not a tip — it goes to the company. If the contract says "service charge" not "gratuity," a separate tip for the captain, servers, and bartenders is appropriate. Standard tipping for catering staff is ten to twenty percent of the food bill, distributed among the team.