Mayor Traiteur

Mayor Traiteur's own "Buffets & sit-down meals" page prices both formats it names, and the order is not what most couples would guess. A buffet starts at CHF 58 per person, minimum 20 guests. A full sit-down meal at the table, 3 courses including a vegan option, starts at CHF 48 per person, also minimum 20 guests. The format most people assume is the cheaper, more casual choice is the pricier one here. That single detail, printed twice on the same page in the same wording, is a better guide to how this caterer actually organises a wedding than any of its own marketing language.

The marketing language is consistent, at least. "Your caterer in Geneva and the canton of Vaud" runs in the homepage title tag, the contact page, the About page and the wedding page itself, always paired with the same founding year, 2010. MAYOR TRAITEUR is a family business: the About page names Serge Mayor, a chef, and his wife Nawel, a trained interior designer, as the founders, and Nawel still bylines posts on the company blog today. The business serves 10 to 1,000 guests, a range wide enough to run a cocktail hour for a handful of people or a wedding of considerable size, and it works across both cantons its name in the URL does not mention: not just Geneva city, but the wider canton of Vaud alongside it.

A buffet priced higher than a 3-course sit-down meal

The dedicated wedding page (Weddings, Christenings, Birthdays) frames the choice as a matter of taste rather than budget: "Whether a sit-down meal or a convivial buffet, each format is tailor-made to suit your private reception." Nawel Mayor's own blog post on the subject, dated 2019 and still live, goes further, calling the buffet "the comfort of a sit-down meal" with less setup, while warning that a table meal "requires the most preparation and organization" and needs qualified staff once a party runs past 20 people, plus a venue equipped to reheat dishes, something the post says Mayor Traiteur itself provides. Her second post, aimed specifically at wedding couples, lists "do you prefer a sit-down or buffet-style meal" as one of the first questions a couple should settle before contacting any caterer, alongside guest count and budget, and recommends booking 8 to 10 months ahead of the date. None of that changes the fact that the priced menu on the actual sales page runs backwards from the usual assumption: the format with less setup work costs more per head here, and a couple choosing on budget rather than style should read the numbers rather than the framing.

The full catalogue, a 29-page PDF downloadable from the homepage, breaks both formats down further. The sit-down menu at CHF 48 is the base tier; 2 higher tiers run to CHF 52 and CHF 58 per person with richer starters (beef fillet, sea bream and lobster bisque options) and a second dessert. The buffet, by contrast, is built modularly in the catalogue rather than sold as one flat CHF 58 package: cold dishes from CHF 6 to CHF 15 per person by category, hot dishes from CHF 8 to CHF 16, and a sweet buffet from CHF 5 per person, all with a 15-guest minimum. A couple working from the catalogue rather than the website's own summary page can effectively price a lighter or heavier buffet than the flat figure the wedding page quotes, which is worth knowing before assuming CHF 58 is fixed.

Geneva has a delivery price list. Vaud has "upon request."

The canton of Vaud appears in almost every sentence Mayor Traiteur writes about itself, but the catalogue's own logistics page prices delivery for one canton only. Geneva gets a tiered scale: CHF 25 for a meal-tray delivery with no pickup, rising through CHF 50, CHF 80 and CHF 120 to CHF 160 for delivery, on-site furniture setup and collection. Underneath that table sits one line: "Other cantons upon request." Vaud is not named there, and no separate figure is published for it anywhere in the catalogue or on the site. That does not mean Vaud goes unserved. The wedding page states plainly that the team will "come to your home or the venue of your choice, in Geneva and throughout the canton of Vaud," and the reception-areas page lists partner venues across both without splitting them by canton. It means the dual-canton claim is a genuine, stated service area, exactly as the assigned brief for this listing frames it, but the pricing behind it is not published evenly: a couple in Vaud should expect a quote rather than a published rate, where a couple in Geneva can check the published tiers first.

That reception-areas page names 8 partner venues (Clos du Château, Domaine de Collex-Bossy, Domaine de Choully, the Polomarco art gallery, Domaine des Bossons, Le Cercle des Bains, Domaine de Plein-Vent, L'Icebergues and Ferme du Lignon among them) plus one named planning partner, Suissevents, a Geneva wedding planner and events agency the site says handles "the entire wedding planning process: planning, decoration, D-day coordination, entertainment, sound and staging." Mayor Traiteur itself supplies the food and the service staff; a couple wanting a coordinator for everything else has a named referral rather than a vague promise of "partners available on request."

The clause for an address outside Switzerland

The catalogue's terms and conditions are unusually specific for a supplier in this category, and one clause reaches directly for a foreign couple's situation. Payment runs on a 50 percent deposit at confirmation, with the balance due within 10 days of the final invoice and a 5 percent late penalty after that, standard enough for a Swiss caterer. Then: "In the case of an overseas billing address, full payment must be received no later than 8 days prior to the event; failing which, Mayor Traiteur Sàrl shall be released from any contractual obligation." That is a harder line than the domestic terms, and it is stated plainly rather than buried, which at least tells a couple planning from abroad exactly what deadline they are working against rather than leaving them to guess.

Cancellation runs on a similar ladder: free up to a month before the event, 50 percent of the invoiced total retained for a cancellation made 15 to 6 days out, and the full 100 percent charged inside 5 days. Staffing is billed separately from the food: a maître d'hôtel or chef de cuisine runs CHF 55 during daytime hours and CHF 59 on a weekend or public-holiday night, with service and kitchen staff at CHF 49 and CHF 51 respectively. The catalogue never states whether those figures are hourly or per booking, which is worth asking about directly rather than assuming either way. Jurisdiction for any dispute is fixed to the Canton of Geneva regardless of where the client is billed.

A tasting reserved for weddings and events over 120 guests

Most Swiss caterers offer some kind of tasting; Mayor Traiteur's own terms scope it narrowly. "DEGUSTATION: Applicable exclusively to weddings and events exceeding 120 guests. By appointment, a tasting for two people is held at our premises on weekdays (Tuesday to Friday), from 12:00 PM. This will be invoiced should the event not proceed." A wedding under that guest count is not automatically entitled to one, and a couple planning something smaller should ask what tasting arrangement, if any, applies to them rather than assume the standard terms cover it. Nawel Mayor's own blog post frames tastings as an industry norm that "can be free or for a fee," which is a general statement about Swiss caterers rather than a description of her own company's specific rule; the catalogue's line above is the one that actually governs a booking here.

Nawel Mayor's own blog posts, and one that never should have gone live

2 of the posts on Mayor Traiteur's blog carry Nawel Mayor's own byline and read like a founder writing from experience: specific, practical advice on choosing between a cocktail reception, a buffet and a table meal, and a separate post walking a couple through what to ask a Geneva wedding caterer before booking. A third post on the same blog, titled simply "TEST 1," reads nothing like either of them: "Mayor Traiteur Genève: excellence in high-end event catering. In an environment where events have become a real lever for image and emotion, Mayor Traiteur has established itself as a benchmark for top-of-the-range event catering in Geneva." That is generic marketing copy sitting under a placeholder title, published to the public blog rather than caught before it went live, and it says nothing specific about this caterer that could not be said about any other. It does not change any fact about the food or the terms, but it is a small, honest sign that not everything on the site has had the same care put into it as the founder's own posts.

On language, the site is fully translated into English throughout, including the contact form, but nothing on it states what language the event-day team actually works in. The one concrete signal either way cuts against fluency rather than for it: the About page's English text invites a client to "round up your bill to the nearest ten pounds," almost certainly a mistranslation of Swiss francs rather than an actual reference to sterling, since every price on the site and in the catalogue is quoted in CHF. A couple planning from abroad should ask directly how the day itself will be run, in what language, rather than take the translated website as proof either way.

Mayor Traiteur's case for a foreign or destination wedding rests on the parts of its own paperwork that are unusually concrete for this category: a published price floor for both wedding formats, a full cancellation ladder, a named payment deadline for an overseas billing address, and a tasting policy that says exactly which weddings qualify. Set against that: the dual-canton claim in its marketing is not backed by dual-canton pricing, the staffing rates leave their basis for a client to ask about, and the blog carries at least one page that undercuts the founders' own considered writing sitting right next to it. None of that is disqualifying. It is the kind of unevenness a small, real family business produces, and a couple who reads the catalogue rather than just the homepage gets a clearer picture of what they are actually booking than the tagline alone provides.