Boucherie Yerly

Boucherie Yerly's own terms document for its Traiteur service states the arrangement in one flat line: "Pas de service de livraison. Marchandise et matériel à retirer directement auprès de notre boucherie." No delivery. The food, and any equipment that comes with it, leaves the shop in the client's own car, picked up in person on Route du Barrage 73 in Rossens, a village on the edge of the Gibloux hills south of Fribourg. That single sentence settles what kind of caterer this is before any menu or price does. Nobody from the shop travels to a reception hall, plates a course tableside, or clears up afterward. A couple booking here becomes, in effect, their own delivery driver and their own serving staff for the day.

The butcher shop behind it dates to 2003, when Gérard and Anita Yerly opened it in Rossens. The team today is 8 people, including 3 apprentices, working Tuesday through Saturday; the shop's own account puts 95 percent of its meat as Swiss or regional, with one stated exception, horse meat, sourced from Canada. A full renovation finished in 2019 brought the premises up to what the shop calls current hygiene, comfort and safety standards. The shop also promotes a newer local label, "Le Porc d'Ici," pork raised for the same regional boutefas AOP and jambon de la borne AOP supply chains that already back several of its own products. Trade recognition has followed the kitchen too: the shop's own list of prizes includes a Boucher Charcutier de l'année title in 2017, the same year its steak tartare won a gold medal at the UPSV quality competition, alongside further medals, mostly silver, for its own smoked charcuterie line, the Petite Sarine.

A menu priced dish by dish, not per head

What actually gets picked up is spelled out in an 8-page PDF the shop calls its "Service Traiteur 2026" menu, priced item by item rather than quoted as a single blended per-head figure. Cold starters run from a plain green salad and carrots at CHF 5 up to a housemade foie gras terrine in old plum brandy at CHF 17, with a housemade pâté, a smoked salmon plate and a small steak tartare plate priced in between; a cold platter, "plat froid divers," is priced by weight at CHF 73 a kilo, and a "pain-péro," a hollowed party loaf serving 6 to 10 people, starts at CHF 70 apiece. 6 hot starters follow at CHF 8 to CHF 16, mostly vol-au-vent and puff-pastry formats; the menu itself warns that the pastry doesn't stay crisp once it's been kept warm for transport, and suggests baking it on site instead when a client can manage that. 16 main courses run CHF 15 to CHF 29 and stay in Fribourg comfort-food territory: jambon de la borne AOP with steamed potatoes and cabbage-carrots at CHF 21, an emincé of veal à la zurichoise with rösti at CHF 26, a beef bourguignon with mixed vegetables at CHF 22, a whole loin of veal with tarragon sauce at CHF 29. Every dish carries its own printed price; nothing on this menu gets quoted as a single per-guest number.

An entrecôte you finish cooking yourself

One of those 16 mains breaks the pattern entirely. The "Rumsteak du Dragon," CHF 23 a person for a minimum of 2 people, arrives as raw entrecôte laid out on a hot cooking plate with onions, cherry tomatoes and café de Paris butter, and the guests finish cooking it themselves at the table, to their own taste. It needs a gas réchaud underneath to keep the plate hot, has to be ordered at least 2 days ahead, and the plate itself carries a CHF 10 deposit, returned like the grills once it comes back. It's the only dish on the whole list that turns dinner into something the guests do together rather than something served to them already finished, and it says something about the operation as a whole: even the most elaborate item on the menu is built around equipment the client borrows and hands back, not a chef who plates it.

What's lent free, what's rented, and what needs a deposit

Grills, gas or charcoal, a cauldron, spits, a plancha and assorted thermoports are all lent out at no charge against a returnable deposit; the brochette party's own charcoal grill specifically carries a CHF 20 deposit, refunded once it comes back clean. A gas réchaud for fondue rents at CHF 8 and comes filled for that price: a burner, a caquelon, a wooden fork and a spare gas bottle already loaded, sized for 4 to 6 people. Food carries 2.6 percent VAT on top of the printed price, equipment 8.1 percent. Payment is cash, settled when the equipment comes back clean, in order and in one piece; cleaning is otherwise the client's own job, available from the shop only as a paid extra.

A grill party priced by appetite

The shop's self-declared "hit," the brochette party, is the one product with its own dedicated page separate from the traiteur menu, and it prices itself by how hungry the table is rather than a flat rate. 5 meats (beef, horse, chicken, lamb, pork), 3 kinds of housemade chipolata plus merguez, 4 vegetables and 3 marinades go onto oversized skewer sticks. A "mangeur normal" portion, 220 grams of meat and 40 grams of vegetables, runs CHF 13.50 a person; "bon mangeur" gets 250 grams for CHF 14.50; "gros mangeur" gets 280 grams for CHF 15.50; "mangeur XXL" gets 300 grams for CHF 17. Any change to the mix costs a flat CHF 1 supplement. Tellingly, the terms document specifically excludes both the brochette party and the fondue formats from what counts as "Traiteur" service at all: they're available any day, with no guest minimum attached, unless the client also wants a hot side like rice or a gratin alongside.

15 people on a Tuesday, 80 on a Sunday

The Traiteur service proper runs on stricter numbers than the grill or the fondue. A weekday or Saturday lunch booking needs 15 people minimum; a Saturday evening needs 40. Sunday carries no catering service at all, and the terms document is specific about when that rule tightened: as of 1 January 2023, the shop stopped offering Sunday traiteur except for events of at least 80 guests. The live Traiteur page states the same exception more loosely, citing a large quantity or several groups booked for the same date, with a first communion given as its one example; the terms PDF is the more precise and the more recently dated of the 2. Either way, a Sunday event under 80 guests sits outside what this business's own published terms allow it to book. Orders for the Traiteur menu also go by phone only; the shop's own page says plainly it doesn't take catering bookings by email.

An allergen list for the marinades, and nothing about a tasting

The one dietary-facing document on the site is an ingredient and allergen list for the kitchen's own recipes: 17 named marinades, from a garlic base to a black-garlic version, 5 breading mixes for the Bressane-style fondue, and 4 dried horse-sausage styles. It reads as a food-safety declaration rather than a service promise. Nothing on the site or in the terms PDF describes how the kitchen handles a vegetarian, vegan or allergy-specific request for a catering order, and no tasting of any kind, paid or free, is offered or mentioned anywhere. There's no cancellation clause either; the only payment term stated is cash on the day the equipment comes back. A couple with a dietary need or a change of plan would need to ask directly rather than expect a standard policy to already cover it.

A butcher's counter, not a hosted reception

Boucherie Yerly is trading now, not just archived online. Its own contact page carries 2 dated 2026 closures: 1 to 17 August, already behind as of this writing, and 19 to 26 October, still ahead, with exact reopening dates given for both, 18 August and 27 October. That's the kind of detail a dormant site stops bothering to update. What it actually sells a reader here isn't a hosted event but raw material for one: award-winning charcuterie, a fully priced Fribourg-style menu, rental equipment down to the fondue burner, and one genuinely interactive centrepiece dish, all handed over the counter for the client to load into a car and take home. That fits an informal, help-yourself gathering, the kind that already has a garden, a few trestle tables and someone willing to run the grill, far better than it fits a couple hiring a full-service team to run an unattended reception. Anyone who needs staff on site, delivery to a venue, or a Sunday date under 80 guests should keep looking elsewhere in this catalog. Anyone happy to be their own catering crew for a day gets, from this shop, prizewinning ingredients and a menu priced to the franc before they ever pick up the phone.