Help

            While you can do a lot on your own, hiring help can be extremely valuable. While you can hire enough people to make yourself superfluous to the whole process, an Downton Abbey sized staff is not necessary. One or two people to fetch things can be the difference between enjoying or working your own party.

While hiring the kid next door to pour drinks and serve food can take a great deal off your plate, you should also recognize the limits of your employees responsibilities. He is more than qualified to pour some drinks, but don’t expect the first teenager you see to be a good chef. Similarly, if you hire him to serve, do not also expect him to clean, and if you want him to clean as well, let him know before, and pay him for the job. These might be obvious, but it is common for the scope of a job to widen unfairly, and the kid next door who thought he would just be bringing food to the table is being asked to do more complicated things beyond just plating and serving the food.

What all of this means is if you are hiring limited help, plan the meal accordingly. Don’t serve Filet Mignon which requires specific timing if you are not hiring a chef. Instead gear towards oven roasted and baked things, in order to ensure that the closest your help comes to cooking is putting something in and taking it out of the oven, and plating it. If you want to make things much easier on everyone though, invest in a warming rack which can keep food and plates warm for longer periods of time (keep in mind though that certain foods do in fact dry out if in a warming rack for too long.) Or you can just hire a chef, but he will cost more than the rest of the help put together.

            As for finding help: one can always hire cater waiters directly. If this is not an option, I recommend hiring from a nearby college, as the students tend be well mannered, and do a good job, while working relatively cheap.

            If you are serving a meal to 12 people you will certainly need 2 people (while you can put more than is fair on yourself, you should not do it to anyone else, especially hired help). One of them should always be in the room to make the guests feel seen.

            I start by doing all the work I can before my help arrives in the interest of making their lives easier (I could hire more help, but I want to save money), whether is it cooking what foods can be cooked early (Given I have a heating rack in my home, I pre-plate everything around the time the help arrives and put it in the warmer, with the exception of maybe one or two things that are very easy to put in and take out of the oven and plate) or putting the after dinner coffee in the machine, or or organizing things for ease. I give my help all a schedule that tells them when they should start something and when they should finish so that the food is being served when it is ready. Then I run through to make sure they know the signals we will use to tell each other what we need to know (e.g. the first footman enters the room to let me know the next course is ready, I put my flatware down to let him know we are ready for the next course) You can divide labor however I do as follows:

1. I break them up into the first footman, and the second footman. It does not matter what you call them, but that is an easy classification. The first footman is the one in charge of drinks, and the second is the one in charge of Food. The first is the one who is usually present. Note: footmen do not have to be men. in fact I gravitate towards women, as women are more likely to have the clothes necessary to look the part (more on the clothes they should wear later).

2. During the serving of the Hors d’Oeuvres, I have my second footman take coats, and my first footman serve pre-dinner drinks. (note, unless you hire a bartender, do not ask him to make cocktails, he should pour white wine or champagne.) Hors d’Oeuvres can be set on the table and forgotten unless you have a large party also remember, they do not have to be complicated a simple shrimp cocktail will do the trick. When everyone has arrived, the first footman dispersal to serve the soup (more often than not I have the soup already served when people sit. it is fancier to serve it once they are already seated, but its just easier to have the footman serve it when people aren’t there.) Once that is done, the footman returns, which signals me that everything is ready and I can direct people to the dining room at my leisure (he may also announce it).

3. Upon serving the course, the first footman should leave, and his return should signal to you that the next course is ready. You should not feel rushed when he returns, he goes first in case something takes longer than expected, not to speed the dinner along. The courses themselves should take about 10-15 minutes each. You should also give them time in one of the lighter courses that the two of them might shuffle around as necessary to accommodate nature (I usually use the entrée as more often than not the next dish does not require any work.

4. If the wine is changing with the next course, the return of the first footman lets the second know to do it before they go and get the next course. Let him do that job before signalling you are ready for the next course. If glasses need swapped because you elected to use a different wine with each course, the two of them should both change the white wine glasses for red wine glasses together. Also, though it goes without saying, the first footman should be keeping everyone’s drinks topped off.

5. once all preparations are done for the next course, the two footmen will begin to watch you. When you feel it is time, you should place your flatware next to each other, and at 4:30 on your plate. (if you want to use the restroom, then place them facing each other.) When you do this, the footmen should know (because you told them) to immediately collect the course no matter who is done (You should wait till everyone is done unless you are trying to assert your power over someone for some reason.) Note also that while it is polite to place your flatware the same way for collection if you are a guest, waiters should be informed to only collect based on what the host does.

6. You should not expect some kids making $100 for the night to perfectly choreograph their movement, but they should have enough synchronicity to take and place plates at roughly the same time. For the record, it is actually a myth that one serves from the left and takes from the right, though it is a myth so ubiquitous that it has become official in a way. For this reason and this reason only, you may tell your footmen to adhere to it, I however, do not. Instead I tell my first footman to take my plate first, from the left, and the plate of the person to my immediate right (also from the left) second. The second footman is told to mirror starting with the person directly across the table from me. When they return with food, they place the plate at the setting of the right most vacant spot, take the plate from the spot to the right of that, circle around the back of that person (at this point one plate is used and one is new) place the new plate at his setting, and take the plate of the man to his right. They repeat this, in a circle, at the same pace, until everyone is served. according to this serving, the host, and the person directly across from him should be the first two to have their plates taken, and the last to be served.

7. Immediately upon completion, the first footman should go plate the next course, and repeat until the end.

8. At the end of dinner the second footman should bring the cheese and the bread, and the first footman should bring the coffee.

9. Ideally coffee is served from a silver tea service, (porcelain works just fine). No fancy coffee making technique is necessary (though you are more than welcome to use them), instant works just fine (the quality of beans and proper measurements make a bigger difference than the technique used.) You should be kind enough to load the coffee beans and water before the meal, so the first footmen need only turn it on at the right time and pour from one pot into the other. (You aren’t paying them enough to do too much. Unless you pay for that, in which case, go you!) Also note an instant coffee machine doesn’t have to cost more than $15, you can get a caffeinated and decaffeinated machine. Note also the first footman may go and top off the coffee pots after a few minutes.

10. After the final course you should dismiss the footmen for the night, and pay them. I make it a point to thank them both in front of everyone and tell them I will take care of the rest. I also make it a point to leave their pay in envelopes in a box at the front door that they might easily grab it with little trouble. Some just tell the footmen to go when the last course is served.

11. As a final note, I recommend just leaving everything out to be gotten in the morning, doing the bare minimum required to keep the food from hardening to your things.

As far as etiquette is concerned for your footmen: They should be dressed well according to the event. If it is a full course meal, A white dinner jacket and black-tie tuxedo is ideal for men, and a little black dress with flats for a woman (note that little black dress does not mean sexy in this case, but functional and elegant. There should be no nor thy cleavage showing). I generally prefer to hire women as they are infinitely more likely to have a little black dress than a man is to have a dinner jacket.

The footmen should be briefed on the things they are doing before, and if there is a schedule for things being done (like putting things in the oven) then you should make up the schedule according to when they put in, and when they take out. (I put it according to minutes from the start of dinner so they can more easily adjust their schedule.)

The general rules are that one of them should be in the room with the party at all times, they should not sit in the room with the party, and they should be friendly, but not talkative, and they should address people in the formal, never on a first name basis (similarly I refer to them by their surname without the preceding title). In short, treat them as if they are human beings, who you have hired to do a job.