Metzgerei Hotz

Metzgerei Hotz runs 3 shops within a short drive of each other, in Uster, Winterthur and Fällanden, and they keep noticeably different hours. Uster and Winterthur are both open straight through, 08:00 to 18:30 Monday to Friday plus a Saturday morning, and both carry the fresh cooked lunch menu the homepage advertises for pickup on weekdays. Fällanden does neither. It closes for a midday break every day it opens (08:00 to 12:00, then 14:00 to 18:30) and doesn't open at all on Mondays, because Fällanden isn't really a shop first: it's where the company's own production facility sits, the site the business's About page names as the place "unsere Würste, unser Schinken und viele weitere Spezialitäten entstehen," where its sausages, ham and other specialties are actually made.

None of that town-by-town detail turns out to matter for where a wedding enquiry goes. The catering brochure lists a single address for correspondence, Zürichstrasse 2 in Uster, a single phone line, a single email, and 5 named staff: Melanie Bochsler, titled Leiterin Catering on the team page, alongside Caroline Schweizer, Daniel Enderli, Rina Siegrist and co-owner Urs Marti. What the site never spells out is which branch's kitchen actually cooks a given wedding's food, or whether that depends on which of the 3 towns hosts the event. The /catering/ page's own hero line places a "stilvolle Hochzeit," a stylish wedding, directly alongside a "grosse Firmenfeier" and an event with "hunderten Gästen," hundreds of guests, as 3 sizes of the same product, and says everything is made "in unserer eigenen Küche," in the company's own kitchen, without naming which one. Given that production sits in Fällanden while the catering contact address sits in Uster, that's a genuine open question rather than an assumption either way, and it's one for the catering team directly, not something the public pages answer.

From Hintere Bahnhofstrasse to a 2028 anniversary

Hotz's own site keeps the history short: "Handwerk mit Herz, seit 1878," and "Vier Generationen, ein Versprechen," four generations, one promise, with current owners Andrea and Urs Marti named as the ones carrying it forward. An independent regional profile, Zürisee Aktuell, a local business and lifestyle magazine unconnected to Hotz, fills in dates the company's own site skips. Its account: the first Hotz shop opened in 1878 on the Hintere Bahnhofstrasse in Uster, then moved within Uster in 1973 to Zürichstrasse 8. A second branch opened in Fällanden in 2015, and a third "reopened" in Winterthur in 2017, the magazine's own word choice, which implies an earlier Winterthur presence it doesn't otherwise explain. After a long planning and construction phase, not dated precisely in the piece, the business moved again within Uster to its current headquarters at Zürichstrasse 2. Ownership passed to Urs and Andrea Marti at the start of 2023, and the magazine states plainly that they run the business "in der 5. Generation," the fifth generation, twice, which sits at odds with Hotz's own "Vier Generationen." Neither claim can be checked against a public register from here, so both are stated rather than one being quietly picked. What both sources agree on: a 150-year anniversary is planned for 19 and 20 May 2028.

A butcher who names his cattle supplier

The About page's regional-sourcing claim is generic, "Viehzüchter, Bauern, Bäcker, Gemüsler," livestock farmers, growers, bakers, greengrocers, all described as personally known partners rather than named. Zürisee Aktuell is specific where Hotz's own copy isn't: cattle from Ueli Schmied in Volketswil, pigs from the Kocher family in Wald, calves from Jolanda Schweizer in Schalchen. The same profile lists competition results Hotz's own site only gestures at with "mehrfach ausgezeichnet," multiple times awarded: gold medals at the SFF quality competition, the Swiss butchers' association's own contest, for Fleischkäse, Rindswürstli, Burebratwurst, Kalbsbratwurst, Cervela and Fürtüfel, a silver for Chäs Triller and a bronze for Wintiwurst. 8 named products, 8 named results, not a vague claim of quality.

Building a wedding menu one module at a time

There's no fixed wedding package with a name. The published 23-page brochure, dated Uster, July 2026, has a couple assemble a menu rather than pick one off a shelf. "Ab 20 Personen können wir fast jedes Event mit unserem Catering bedienen," from 20 guests we can serve almost any event, and above that threshold a warm main course means choosing meat or a vegan alternative, then a starch side, a vegetable, and an optional sauce, or picking one of several fixed specialty dishes instead. Named prices anchor the whole system rather than leaving it to a quote: Hotz-Braten at CHF 13.20 per person, a Kalb Filet im Teig at CHF 29.50, a Rinds Filet at CHF 29.50, a grilled Poulet Brust at CHF 11.50. Cold apéro items are sold by the piece with a minimum of 10 per variety, and salad quantities scale with headcount, 2 to 4 kinds recommended from 20 guests, 5 to 7 from 50. For an outdoor reception there are 6 named BBQ grill platters, from "dä Wurster" at CHF 13.50 per person to "dä Gourmet," with prawns, tuna and salmon steak alongside the meat, at CHF 27.00, plus 4 skewer-based variants running CHF 16.50 to 23.50. A genuine caveat sits inside the winter section: Fondue Chinoise, Fondue Bourguignonne and the Tischgrill options aren't orderable in their standard form between 10 and 31 December, and the brochure asks anyone booking in that window to contact the catering department directly, worth knowing for a couple set on a Christmas-season date.

What Hotz rents out, separate from what it cooks

The same brochure prices equipment as plainly as food. Crockery and glassware come with cleaning included, glasses and plates at CHF 1.20 each, cutlery at CHF 0.90, with disposable bamboo alternatives from CHF 0.45. Furniture and cooking equipment are a separate list again: a gas grill at CHF 98.00, a buffet table with a paper cloth at CHF 24.00, a standing table with cloth at CHF 47.00, a double deep fryer at CHF 117.00. Staff are billed hourly rather than folded into a package price: service staff at CHF 77.00 an hour, a Grilleur or a cook at CHF 87.00, a Chef de Service or Chef de Catering at CHF 97.00, with travel time counted as working time. Transport itself has no published flat rate; the brochure states it's calculated case by case on time, distance and the size of the job, which is a normal way for a Swiss caterer to handle it and not a gap specific to Hotz.

The terms behind the quote

Hotz's AGB, printed at the back of the same brochure under the entity name Hotz Fleisch Wurst Traiteur AG, Uster, are unusually easy to read for a Swiss caterer's terms. A contract forms either through the caterer's written confirmation or simply by the event going ahead as booked. Prices are quoted net, excluding statutory VAT, and are explicitly allowed to move before the invoice is issued if ingredient or market costs shift in the meantime, so the number on an early quote isn't guaranteed to be the number on the bill. Payment is due within 15 days of invoicing, no deductions. Cancel after a booking with staff has been confirmed and the fee is CHF 50 per reserved staff member, on top of full billing for anything already delivered. Liability is capped tightly: Hotz answers for gross negligence or intent, not for a customer's own wrong headcount or for strikes and other force majeure, and any quality complaint has to be raised within 24 hours of delivery or it isn't considered. Jurisdiction for any dispute is Uster. None of this is hidden in a PDF nobody reads; it's the same brochure a couple would use to build the menu in the first place.

No English toggle, and a December caveat

The whole site runs in German only, no English version, no language switcher in the navigation, and the page markup itself declares German-Switzerland as its only language. For a tenant built around couples marrying in Switzerland from abroad, that's a real, checkable gap rather than an assumption: nothing on the site claims English service either way, so it's stated here as silence rather than inferred as a no. A couple who don't read German fluently would be relying on the named catering staff, or a translator, from the first enquiry onward. Set against that, Hotz gives a foreign-based couple something several caterers in this category don't: a real price list to plan a wedding budget against, real cancellation terms to read before wiring a deposit, and a business old enough, on both its own account and an independent one, to have a firm sense of what it can and can't promise. The one date worth flagging on a calendar either way: nothing built around Fondue Chinoise or a Tischgrill night comes as a standard order between 10 and 31 December, so a winter wedding date in that window means calling ahead rather than assuming the brochure's default menu applies.