Festlaune

Festlaune was not the first thing this business built. The group's own account of itself, written in the founder's voice, dates the actual restaurant, focacceria, to February 2005, opened on Metzgergasse in St. Gallen. Festlaune itself, the catering brand covering weddings, birthdays, baptisms and company events, only enters that same timeline in July 2018, and the dedicated production and event kitchen behind it, called Festküche, followed later still, going into service in October 2019 on Haggenstrasse in the same town. So when the site's own copy claims a catering range of 1 to 1000 people, that figure sits on top of a restaurant kitchen the group had already been running for years, not a catering company built from a spreadsheet and a rented unit.

The people behind that timeline are named, not folded into "our team". Florian and Evelyn Reiser own the whole group; the site's own history page credits Evelyn, a trained hotel professional and wine specialist from Bavaria, with growing the operation's culinary range after she and Florian married. Day to day, Festlaune itself is not run by the owners directly: the site's own leadership list names Francesco De Rosa specifically as the service lead for "Festlaune - Catering", while production for the group's wider catering and events side, badged "Festküche & Caterings", sits with Andrija Andraka as head of production and Samuel Stolz as head of catering and events. The same page credits Florian's brother, Lukas Zehnder, and his carpentry firm Hölzli in Degersheim, with building and renovating the group's premises throughout, a detail that places the operation inside a family and local-trade network rather than a franchise or a private-equity roll-up.

The 1 to 1000 figure is the headline number, but it is worth reading precisely rather than taking at face value. It appears on the Festlaune homepage as a whole-business claim. The dedicated order page for its 2 apéro formats narrows the same top end to a floor of 2, not 1, guests, a small inconsistency between the marketing page and the booking page worth noting rather than smoothing over. Geographically the site names its own working radius rather than claiming all of Switzerland outright: St. Gallen, Wil, the Bodensee shore, the Rheintal, Graubünden, Thurgau, Appenzell, Winterthur and Zürich, before adding "ganze Schweiz" (the whole of Switzerland) as a catch-all. The named list reads like the honest core of the business, and the catch-all like an invitation to ask, not a guarantee that every corner of the country gets identical service.

The tier that prices itself, and the one that doesn't

Festlaune's own order page splits into 3 tiers, and only 2 of them carry a price. "Apéro ohne Service" and "Apéro mit Service" each list the same 4 fixed menus at the same figures: an Einfacher Apéro at CHF 19.50 per person, a Perfekter Apéro at CHF 29.50, and an Apéro Riche, which the site itself calls a full meal rather than a snack, at CHF 43.00. A fourth option, an Individueller Apéro built to the client's own taste, carries no price and asks for a request instead. What is genuinely odd is that the "with service" version, which adds staff to set up, serve and clear the same food, prints exactly the same 4 figures as the version with no staff at all. Either staffing costs nothing extra at Festlaune, worth confirming directly, or the page simply reuses one price list across 2 products that are not actually priced the same in practice. The site does not say which.

The third tier, "Catering und Events", is the one that actually names weddings, sitting alongside birthdays, baptisms and corporate events under one heading. It carries no menu, no per-person figure and no capacity number of its own, just a promise of a tailored quote: "massgeschneidertes Catering für jeden Anlass" (customised catering for every occasion). So the pattern across the whole page is specific rather than generic: Festlaune is precise to the franc about the small, standardised end of its business and silent about the bespoke end that a wedding actually falls into. A couple planning a wedding through this business should expect a conversation, not a published rate card, and that is worth knowing before the first call rather than after it.

5 borrowed rooms and one that isn't

Festlaune has no venue of its own to show off, which puts it in a different category from a hotel or hall that also caters its own weddings. Instead its homepage names 6 places it says it works "oft & gerne" (often and gladly): Festküche in St. Gallen, itself part of the same group; Blumenranch in Niederbüren; Konigs in St. Gallen; Auen-Land in Stein; Troxler in Untereggen; and the Hagschnurer Schüür in Hüttwilen. 5 of those 6 belong to somebody else, which means most of what Festlaune sells is the food, the equipment and the staff arriving at a room it does not own or manage day to day. The sixth, Festküche, is the group's own dedicated production and event kitchen on Haggenstrasse, marketed elsewhere on the same site as "DIE Eventküche der Ostschweiz" (the event kitchen of Eastern Switzerland). A couple who wants Festlaune's own space rather than a rented hall or a private garden would look there first.

A wedding is one line among several

Nothing on this site treats a wedding as its flagship occasion. The order form's own dropdown for "Anlass" lists 8 options in roughly the same breath: Geburtstag (birthday), Kundenanlass (client event), Firmenanlass (company event), Hochzeit (wedding), Familienfest (family celebration), Trauermahl (funeral reception), Taufen (baptism) and Sonstiges (other). The separate events-planning page, run from the same address and the same phone number as Festlaune's own contact block, opens with a run of rhetorical questions in this order: "Bist du in Trauer? Planst du einen Firmenanlass? Heiratest du bald? Oder bist du in allgemeiner Festlaune?" (Are you in mourning? Planning a company event? Getting married soon? Or just generally in a party mood?) Grief comes first in that sentence, the wedding third, and the last question doubles as the brand's own name, a small pun that only works because the German word "Laune" means mood or spirits. None of this makes Festlaune a worse choice for a wedding. It does mean a couple should expect the same operational muscle that runs a funeral reception on a Tuesday to run their reception on a Saturday, staffed and equipped the same way, rather than a business built around bridal fairs and wedding-only marketing.

What actually shows up with the food

Where Festlaune is concrete is in what it brings. Its own equipment list runs to proper porcelain, glassware and cutlery, long or round tables, linen and chair covers, chairs and benches, refrigerated vehicles and trailers, decoration and lighting, bar furniture and tents, none of it described vaguely as "full service" the way some caterers leave it. On the cooking side it names a gas grill, charcoal grill pans at 2.5 metres, a Smoker Joe's barbecue and a grill ring, alongside what it calls its "signature" pieces: a portafilter coffee machine, a Berkel slicer for cured meats, and 3 Piaggio Ape vehicles, the same delivery scooters that run the group's separate APE-tito brand, repurposed here as mobile street-food stalls. That last detail is worth noting for scheduling: if a couple wants the Ape trucks at their reception, those same vehicles are also out working festivals and pop-ups under a different brand name, so booking early is less a courtesy than a practical necessity.

Terms for a shop, not for a wedding

The only terms and conditions published anywhere on the site are explicit about what they cover, and it is not this. The AGB states in its first clause that it governs "Bestellungen der focacceria ag unter www.bestelllaune.ch", the group's separate online shop for ready-to-eat meals and gift vouchers, reachable through a "zu Bestelllaune wechseln" toggle on every page. Read in that context, its terms are informative but beside the point for a wedding: an account is required, the minimum age to register is 18, accepted payment includes invoice, credit card, PostFinance Card and Twint, invoices are due within 10 days or carry a CHF 20 late fee, a confirmed order can be cancelled up to 12 hours before delivery, and a genuine no-show is billed at 25 percent of the order value. None of that is presented as applying to a bespoke wedding booking through the "Catering und Events" tier, and nothing else on the site fills that gap with deposit, cancellation or payment terms of its own. A couple should ask for those in writing before booking rather than assume the shop's rules, or any rule at all, would apply.

Language works the same way. The site carries no English version, no visible toggle, and the page's own HTML declares itself German only. Nothing claims English-language service in either direction, so a foreign or English-speaking couple should confirm directly, in writing, what language the planning calls, the contract and the day itself will actually run in, rather than assume from a German-only site that the answer is no.

What Festlaune actually offers a wedding, then, is the resources of a working, multi-brand restaurant group rather than a dedicated wedding specialist: a kitchen running since 2019, named staff split cleanly between service and production, a genuinely useful pile of hardware from tents to a working Berkel slicer, and a habit of quoting a wedding the same way it quotes a funeral reception or a client apéro, case by case, on request. That suits a couple who already has a venue booked, whether that is one of the 5 outside locations the site names or somewhere else entirely, and wants a caterer that treats the food and the logistics as a serious, well-equipped trade rather than a themed wedding package. It suits less well a couple hoping for a caterer who leads with bridal styling or a dedicated wedding portfolio, since nothing on Festlaune's own site tries to be that.