MyTraiteur

MyTraiteur's own navigation doesn't sell one wedding menu. It sells 3 named formats, buffet apéritif, buffet dinatoire and cocktail dinatoire, each with its own page, next to a separate Mariage page that treats those 3 as building blocks rather than repeating them. The Mariage page says as much directly: a couple can pick a cocktail dinatoire for the vin d'honneur, add a chef à domicile for an intimate dinner beforehand, or bring in a pastry stand, a grill stand or a pop-up bar, mixing pieces from the other pages rather than choosing one fixed wedding package. That makes "wedding catering" the wrong unit to judge this site by. The real choice a couple faces is between the buffet dinatoire and cocktail dinatoire pages specifically, and the 2 names are easy to mix up without reading past them.

The site draws the line between them in how the room runs, not just what's on the plate. A buffet dinatoire is self-service: the crew lays the dishes out in order on the tables and guests help themselves, so, in the page's own words, "you won't need to bring in service staff." Guests can still wander the room, but each one keeps an assigned seat at a table to come back to. A cocktail dinatoire runs the opposite way. Staff carry the food to guests in a fixed sequence, cocktail starter pieces first, then heartier bites, then cheese-based pieces, then something sweet to close, while nobody has an assigned seat and standing tables, armchairs or a lounge corner get set up instead. MyTraiteur's own copy calls it "a good compromise between a simple cocktail and a seated meal," which is an honest description of what separates the 2: buffet dinatoire keeps the seated-meal shape with self-service food, cocktail dinatoire keeps the free-roaming shape with staff-served food. The cocktail dinatoire page adds a second, separate claim worth weighing before choosing between them: it says the format allows more variety in the menu precisely because it isn't limited to a small fixed number of dishes, unlike the more structured buffet formats.

Small plates, buffet trays and staff-carried courses

Buffet apéritif is the smallest and most informal of the 3, built for a pre-dinner reception rather than a full meal: portions small enough to eat standing, without cutlery, arranged on trays that circulate or sit on a table. The page names its own repertoire rather than describing it in general terms, savoury and sweet macarons, mini-muffins, sweet tartlets or savoury mini-tarts, puff pastries, tapenade-style spreads, verrines, mini-croissants, brochettes, and a cheese mini-bite that appears in every formula alongside mignardises to close on something sweet. Vegetarian versions run through this format too.

Buffet dinatoire scales that up into a real meal without adding waiting staff to the bill: a cold buffet with vegetarian alternatives, then a hot buffet with a choice of side dishes, then dessert and a cheese course, with a drink selection available as an add-on. The named theme options are Mediterranean, seafood, and BBQ style, which is a useful clue to how far the kitchen's repertoire actually stretches beyond a generic Swiss buffet.

Cocktail dinatoire is pitched as the format for a livelier, more mobile crowd, explicitly recommended for a launch party or an inauguration as much as a private celebration, and it earns the "full meal" label the page gives it through sheer sequencing rather than portion size: starter pieces, heartier bites, cheese-based pieces, then something sweet, each course carried out by the crew rather than laid on a table. The named items lean puff pastry and grilled: croissants and friands, rolled pieces, brochettes, and a kitchen that names pesto, tapenade and grilled vegetables as its go-to flavours, alongside a vegetarian portion of the menu and a sweet finish of tartlets and fresh-fruit skewers.

What ties a wedding specifically to any of these 3: every wedding menu, on the Mariage page's own account, comes with a matching cheese assortment and a dessert regardless of which format carries it, the team offers to advise on wine pairing including organic wines, vegetarian versions are always available, and the couple chooses between a seated table service or a buffet formula depending on guest count and how the room is laid out, delivered to the reception hall around Lausanne at the agreed time.

What a quote does not automatically include

MyTraiteur's terms document, a 2-page PDF linked from the footer of every page, is more specific than most Swiss caterers publish anywhere, and it answers exactly what a per-head estimate does and doesn't cover. A booking becomes definite only once the client returns the signed quote marked "bon pour accord," at which point a deposit of 50 percent of the pre-tax invoice is due. Any change to the order has to happen at least 5 business days before the event, and the final guest count has to be confirmed within that same 5-day window, because that number is what gets billed even if fewer people actually turn up on the day. VAT is applied at 2.6 percent on a delivery-only order, 8.1 percent on food served on site, and 8 percent on any alcoholic drinks, 3 different rates on what looks like a single bill.

Staff are not automatic. The terms say plainly that the service option has to be requested in the quote, and if it isn't, the client is assumed to be covering that part themselves. Where staff are hired, the quoted hours are marked as an estimate to be recalculated against actual time after the event, and the client cannot dispute a higher final bill if the day runs long; overtime is billed at CHF 40 excluding tax per server for each extra hour, with any part of an hour counted as a full one, and staff working between midnight and 6am are billed at 125 percent. A booking with no service staff still gets its buffet set up by the MyTraiteur crew, but clearing it away afterward is left to the client. Tableware and glasses are a separate line too, not included by default in an event quote and only supplied on request; book a classic cocktail dinatoire without renting glassware and the kitchen instead brings skewers, verrines, wooden cutlery and paper napkins, workable but disposable. Where glasses are rented, the default is one glass per guest, and the terms are explicit that MyTraiteur isn't responsible if that runs short because guests misplace theirs mid-party. Dishwashing after the event, by contrast, is on the house. Rented equipment is either collected the same night or has to be returned within 48 hours, and damage to rented furniture is charged on the final invoice. Corkage is 8 francs per bottle of wine and 2 francs per bottle of mineral water, waived only on drinks the client supplies at their own home rather than at a rented venue.

No page on the site publishes a per-person price or a minimum guest count for any of the 3 formats, which is the ordinary case for a Swiss wedding caterer and not a mark against this one specifically. The online quote form is where those numbers actually get set: it asks for an approximate guest count and a precise or approximate budget, and it carries a separate field for dietary restrictions and intolerances rather than folding that question into general notes. It also asks, as its own question, whether matching glassware is wanted at all, and separately whether the client wants to rent furniture, tableware, cutlery or table linen, so a couple gets to see the full list of what is and isn't bundled before a single figure comes back. One small mismatch is worth flagging rather than smoothing over: the quote form's own dropdown for catering style lists Buffet, Repas assis (seated meal), Apéritif dinatoire, Cocktail dinatoire, Brunch, Petit-déjeuner and Barbecue, a slightly different set of labels than the 3 named format pages in the main navigation, with "Apéritif dinatoire" standing in for "Buffet apéritif" and a seated-meal option that has no dedicated page of its own. 2 things the site never mentions at all, across any of its 16 pages: a tasting process before booking, and any list of partner or approved venues. MyTraiteur delivers to whatever reception hall or home the couple has already arranged rather than steering them toward a preferred address.

The chef who cooks in your kitchen, not a fourth catering format

Chef à domicile sits in the same navigation row as the 3 formats above but is a different kind of product entirely: a professional cook travels to the client's own kitchen and cooks the meal there, serving it as soon as it's ready rather than delivering something pre-made. The menu is agreed in advance around a theme and the formality of the occasion, and the team brings what it needs, the page is specific that only basic kitchen utensils are required on site and MyTraiteur can supplement with its own equipment if the kitchen falls short. Ingredients are prepared from what the site calls its own "laboratoire," and the same service extends outdoors, a terrace or a garden in the warmer months, and to more than a private home: a rented holiday address, a reception hall or a workplace, anywhere around Lausanne. For a smaller, more intimate wedding-weekend dinner rather than the main reception, this is the format on the site actually built for that scale.

French only, and 3 labels rather than a story

Every page on mytraiteur.ch declares itself fr-FR, there's no English toggle in the navigation and nothing on the domain links to an English version of any page. That matters directly for this tenant's readers: a couple planning from abroad who don't read French will need to confirm by phone or email whether contracts, tastings and day-of coordination can actually run in English, because the site itself gives no signal either way. The footer carries 3 logos rather than an About page's worth of history: Fait Maison, the Swiss label for food actually cooked from scratch on the premises, Bio Suisse, the organic certification, and Ecobion, a hygiene, analysis and training outfit. None of the 3 is explained on the page itself, and no founding year, ownership story or staff biography appears anywhere on the 16 pages the site publishes. A separate rental company, MyBanquet, is advertised through a pop-up ad on MyTraiteur's own homepage, a furniture and decor specialist whose own site says its rentals include delivery and collection at the event site, useful to know since MyTraiteur's own terms treat furniture and tableware as something a couple books separately in any case.

The verdict

MyTraiteur is worth shortlisting less for a signature dish than for how legible its own site makes the decision a couple actually has to make. 3 formats, not one, each with its own service style spelled out clearly enough to choose between without a phone call, and a terms document that states, in figures, what a quote leaves out rather than making a couple find out at the final invoice. The site was still being updated within the past few weeks at the time of writing, so this is an active, working kitchen rather than an abandoned listing. The 2 real gaps are that nothing is priced until a couple fills in the online form, and that a couple needs to confirm English service directly since the site offers none of its own. Neither is unusual for a Swiss caterer, and both are the kind of question this business's own quote form is built to answer quickly rather than leave hanging.