Wedding Catering on the Cumberland Plateau

Getting married on the Cumberland Plateau is different from getting married in a city. The venues are better looking and further apart, the buildings are older, and a good number of them were built for something other than weddings. That changes what catering has to be able to do.

We are a wood-fired pizza truck based in Coalmont, in Grundy County, and most of the weddings we cater are within an hour or two of here. This is what we have learned about feeding people up here.

The distances are real

A caterer in Nashville quoting for a wedding near Monteagle is quoting for a day that includes several hours of driving before anyone cooks anything. That shows up in the price whether it is itemized or not, and it shows up in how flexible they can be if something changes.

It also shapes what food is possible. Anything cooked in a Nashville kitchen and driven to Tracy City has been in a box for a while by the time it reaches a plate. For some dishes that is fine. For anything meant to be crisp, it is not.

Local is not automatically better. It is still worth asking any caterer where they are cooking and how far the food travels.

Most plateau venues have no kitchen

Barns, farm buildings, event fields, family land, restored halls. They are the reason people get married up here and they are almost never equipped to cook for a hundred and fifty people.

That leaves a caterer either transporting everything or bringing a kitchen. A truck brings the kitchen, which is the whole argument for one at a venue like this. The oven is wood-fired and it is on the vehicle, so the venue’s lack of a stove stops being your problem.

Weather on the plateau, and what it does to a wedding

Two things are worth planning around up here, and neither is the forecast for your actual day.

The ground. A grass field in a dry August and the same field after a wet week in April are not the same venue for anything on wheels. Agree a hard route and a parking spot early. This one question has saved more days than any other.

The temperature swing. Evenings up here drop faster than people expect, particularly in spring and fall. That is an argument for food that arrives hot and keeps arriving hot rather than a buffet that has been sitting out since six.

Rain itself is less of a problem than couples fear. We cook inside the truck with an awning over the window. The question is where your guests stand, which is one more reason to consider family style service if there is no covered area.

Where we go

Our regular area runs from Nashville in the north to Chattanooga in the south, and from Fayetteville in the west across to Crossville and Pikeville in the east. Inside that we are often in Tracy City, Monteagle, Manchester, Tullahoma, Winchester, McMinnville, Viola, Dunlap, Jasper and Soddy Daisy.

For larger events we will consider dates outside that area. Ask us.

Guests who have driven a long way

A plateau wedding usually means a good share of your guests have traveled, and some of them are staying somewhere with no dinner options after nine at night. That changes the calculation on how much food you order and when.

A late second service is more useful here than it is at a city wedding where everyone can find something on the way home. It is worth deciding in advance whether you want us there for it rather than realizing at ten that people are hungry again.

A venue on the plateau that has this worked out

If your wedding is a small one, The Getaway on Ranger Creek has a package built around exactly this problem. Up to 50 guests, a full buy-out of all five rental units for two nights, and a ceremony area beside the creek with woods, ferns and lady slippers behind you. Your guests sleep where the wedding is, which solves the drive home and the nine o’clock dinner problem in one go.

We cater those weddings in cooperation with The Getaway, so the venue and the food are arranged together rather than separately. Their wedding page has the details.

Why we cook the way we do, up here specifically

Neapolitan pizza is at its best within a few minutes of leaving the oven, which is exactly the wrong quality for a food that has to be driven somewhere. Cooking it at your venue solves that, and everything else we do is in service of the same idea.

The dough starts two days before your wedding, from a poolish through a long cold ferment, because a dough with 32 to 38 hours in it holds up in a way a same-day dough does not. The full process is written out here. Pizzas that come out ahead of the rush go into a dry-heat cabinet rather than a steam one, which is the difference between a slice that is still good twenty minutes later and one that is not.

Ask about your venue

Send us the venue name, the date, your guest count and the time you want people eating, and we will tell you whether it works before you commit to anything. If we know the venue already, we will tell you where we usually park and how it tends to go. Everything we need is listed on the catering page, and if you would rather see what we make first, the menu is here.