[Sca-cooks] Catering question

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

I'm trying to make the best of a really annoying situation. The situation
is this: most of the sites that the 12th Night event steward has spoken to
require at least a catering license, and most only allow outside
caterers for anything on-site that has to do with food.

Of the two sites that we know will let us do our own feast, the ES hates
the one with the good kitchen (I will admit it is probably too small for
a 500-person event), and the site she likes, has a really lousy kitchen.
[For "lousy", read: one electric stove in the kitchen and another in
another room across the building and down a floor, one regular fridge, one
sink, and two counters.

So I am in the process of finding a caterer or two who is willing to work
with us with our menu and recipes and all that neat stuff. But I have
never before even spoken to a caterer so I'm not entirely sure how to
phrase things.

Has anyone on the list ever had to deal with a situation like this, where
you have to cater the feast to be able to get a decent site? How do you
handle it?

Margaret