La Ferme Vaudoise

La Ferme Vaudoise sits on Place de la Palud, next to Lausanne's town hall, on the square where the old justice fountain stands and where a country market sets up twice a week. That location matters more than it would for most caterers on this list, because the shop itself is the point. Its own site gives the Traiteur page 3 short paragraphs, 3 lines of pricing and 2 phone numbers, then stops. The Produits page, by contrast, keeps naming specific suppliers and specific dishes for screen after screen: cheese, wine, spirits, bread, meat, all tied to a named village or a named grower. A visitor reading both pages back to back would conclude, correctly, that this business sells groceries first and caters events on the side, exactly the shape the shop describes for itself: "votre traiteur à Lausanne" (your Lausanne caterer) is the tagline, but the noun that gets the detail is "magasin," the shop.

Lausanne's own tourism board lists the address as Place de la Palud 5, which matches the business's own site; the canton's separate tourism-promotion page, Vaud Promotion, gives Place de la Palud 2 instead, on a page whose footer is still copyrighted 2023. 2 current sources against one stale one is enough to settle it, and it is worth flagging here because a couple trying to find the shop in person, rather than just checking a website, is exactly who a wrong house number would cost.

Close to 90 producers behind the counter

The shop's own pitch is specific about where its stock comes from: "dégustez directement les produits des quelques nonante producteurs/agriculteurs que compte notre magasin-traiteur," taste the products of the close to 90 producers and farmers our shop-and-catering counter carries. It frames this as a stance, not just a supply chain: "la proximité, la transparence et le respect du fermier," proximity, transparency and respect for the farmer, over the environment and the land as well. Lausanne Tourisme's own listing corroborates the pitch rather than just repeating it, describing the shop as "specialised in products from the Vaud terroir" and quoting a food writer it calls "Cannelle Rebelle," whose tip on the page is to ask staff for advice on cooking papet vaudois, the region's cabbage-and-sausage dish. The same listing names the shop's own favourite product as raisinée, a thick fruit syrup, which also turns up by name on the shop's own product page (Raisinée d'Aclens). 2 independent descriptions landing on the same specific product is a better signal than either one alone.

Lamb from Orny, hydromel from La Sarraz

What actually sits on the shelves is named, not generic. Meat and charcuterie: fresh lamb from Orny, chicken from Bochuz, farmhouse ham from Grandson, dried ham from Vaumarcus, fresh and smoked fish from Lake Geneva (perch fillets, féra, pike, plus smoked féra and trout), sausage-and-cabbage specialities from Baulmes and Lucens, and pâtés from Château-d'Oex. Cheese runs from a Gruyère selection through an alpine cheese made on an alpage the site says belongs to the City of Lausanne, a cheese it credits to a named maker, C.Vuille of La Brévine, as a world-championship winner, then on to Tomme de Dizy, Brie de la Venoge, goat's cheese from Charbonnières and ewe's cheese from Rossignière. 4 house fondue blends are named separately, including a goat's-cheese version. The wine list is a roll call of named growers rather than a region: wines from the City of Lausanne's own vineyards, the canton's "Les Milles" label, and bottles credited to J.-D. Pavillard, J.-D. Dubois, R. Paccot, H. Chollet and M. Gros, plus 8 wines credited to a grower named Bernard Ravet. Spirits go further still, into eaux-de-vie from Valeyres-sous-Rance, cider and perry from a producer called Fruit-Art, liqueurs from D.Gachet in Eclépens, and a mead the site itself calls "la boisson des dieux," the drink of the gods, made by F.Brunet in La Sarraz. Groceries add 9 named oils pressed at the Moulin de Sévery and honey from La Sarraz and Eclépens; the bakery section runs to flûtes vaudoises from Vullierens and Montricher, bricelets, walnut cake, soft caramels and chocolates credited to a maker in Noiraigue. None of this reads like filler copy for a generic terroir shop. It reads like a supplier list someone actually keeps.

3 apéro sizes, and a name to call

The catering offer itself is small and fixed. 3 platter sizes, each priced per person: an apéritif platter of 4 kinds of meat with a cheese assortment and 3 kinds of bread at CHF 15, the same platter with vegetable dips and cream cakes added at CHF 18, and a fuller "apéro dînatoire" at CHF 20. The site lists weddings alongside birthdays, baptisms, product launches and retirement parties as reasons to book, and offers tailored advice for brunches, corporate dinners and meetings, but nothing beyond those 3 fixed sizes and their published prices. There is no separate wedding package, no minimum guest count stated, and no mention of staffed service, delivery or setup: what is published is a platter, not an event. Enquiries split between 2 numbers, the shop's own landline and a mobile number given to one named person, Christel Kesselring, for catering specifically. That split, a shop line and one named mobile rather than an events department or a booking form, matches everything else this business tells you about its own scale: it is a grocery counter with a phone number for parties, not a caterer that happens to run a shop.

French only, nothing about paying from abroad

Every page on the site, including the legal-notices page, is French only; there is no language switcher anywhere in the HTML, and neither of the 2 tourism-board listings that mention the shop suggest it serves visitors in English. Nothing on any page addresses paying from abroad, a deposit, a cancellation policy or a minimum order for a private event: those questions aren't answered here, which is worth stating plainly rather than assuming an answer either way. For a couple planning a Swiss wedding from outside the country, that means La Ferme Vaudoise makes sense as a local pickup for a rehearsal dinner, a welcome apéro or a small home reception close to the old town, arranged by phone in French (or through someone who can call on the couple's behalf), rather than as a caterer that will run an English-language wedding contract of its own.

A grocery counter's idea of a wedding platter

Everything about this listing points the same way. The site names dozens of specific growers and producers and gives almost no space to the wedding page; the 3 catering tiers are built from the same meat, cheese and bread the shop already sells by the piece; and the person answering catering calls is one named individual with a mobile number, not a department. That is not a weakness so much as an honest description of what is on offer: a well-stocked, independently corroborated Vaud terroir shop on one of Lausanne's oldest squares, with a modest, fairly priced apéro-catering line attached to it. A couple wanting a full-service wedding caterer with an events team and a written contract should look elsewhere in this category. A couple wanting real Vaud cheese, cured meat and wine on the table for a smaller Lausanne gathering, from a shop that can name the farm behind almost everything it sells, has found exactly that.