Rubens

Rubens' catering page opens with a promise that reads like delivery. The heading is "Catering in Ihrer Location" (catering at your location), and the line beneath it says plainly that whether the occasion is a company event, a family party, a birthday or a wedding, the operator "brings the enjoyment directly to you." That sentence is the only place the word Hochzeit (wedding) appears anywhere on the site, checked across every page fetched for this listing. Read one line further and the same paragraph changes register completely: "we're happy to take over the complete service on site too, so you can focus on your guests." A tagline built around delivery and a sentence built around staffing sit in the same paragraph, and the page itself never says which one describes the real product.

The operator's own catering terms, printed at the back of an 11-page Cateringkarte PDF, settle it with a number rather than a slogan. Staff are billed by the hour: 55 CHF per person on weekdays, 70 CHF on weekends and public holidays, within a stated working window of 7:00 to 24:00. Delivery without staff is a separate, explicitly cheaper line: a flat 250 CHF, cut to 150 CHF for an address inside the city of St. Gallen. That structure only makes sense if staffed on-site service is the default and pure delivery is the fallback for a couple who don't want anyone from Rubens at the venue itself. The tagline oversells the delivery half of the business; the fine print undersells the staffing half. Read together, this isn't a delivery caterer that also offers staff. It's a staffed caterer that will, for a flat fee, just drop the food off instead.

The Cateringkarte itself isn't a single wedding package quoted as one head price. It's priced dish by dish. The apéro list runs to finger food (a mixed antipasti plate at 13 CHF a portion, filled focaccia sold by the loaf for 12 people at a time, layered skewers of Appenzeller cheese and Bündnerfleisch), and the mains are built to plate, not just pass around: a veal-and-beef Rubens Hackbraten (meatloaf) at 34.50 CHF, a slow-cooked beef rump at 41.50 CHF, a slow-cooked veal rump at 43.50 CHF, herb-crusted pork loin at 27.50 CHF, and chicken in a cream sauce at 29 CHF, alongside 4 Thai curry variants, 2 of them, vegetable and tofu, marked vegan. Every main comes with a choice of sauce (red-wine jus, cream or rosemary) and a side (risotto, potato gratin, basmati rice, Appenzeller polenta, mash or pasta), and a further helping of any main costs a third of the menu price, a plain "Nachservice" clause rather than a vague "ask us" line. 2 fixed-price packages sit alongside the à la carte list: a Fondue Chinoise dinner (salad, 180 grams of Swiss chicken, veal and beef per person, 3 dips, pickled vegetables, a cognac-spiked bouillon, panna cotta) at 58.50 CHF a head, and a help-yourself pasta buffet, Pasta Plausch, at 48 CHF. The operator's own sourcing page states the poultry, beef, veal, pork and bread are all Swiss, and that seasonal, regional produce is used "wenn immer möglich" (whenever possible), a qualifier worth reading as: sometimes, not always.

None of this is the same menu that crosses the counter on a Tuesday. Rubens runs a separate, rolling weekly lunch-menu PDF for its bistro trade, and the version live while researching this listing carried the "KW36" label, week 36 of 2026, the same calendar week the site was fetched. Not one dish name from that rotating lunch card, checked against the full text of the Cateringkarte, turns up anywhere in the catering document's 11 pages. A couple booking Rubens for a wedding is buying a dedicated catering catalogue built and priced for events, not a scaled-up version of whatever happens to be on the lunch board that day.

What costs more if you eat it at Rubens instead

Rubens also runs a second, separate product for groups who want to hold the event on its own premises rather than have it catered elsewhere: "Anlässe für Gruppen," hosted "Im Rubens." The back Hochbereich seats up to 14, the front room up to 26, both together up to 40 seated or 60 standing, and the outdoor Roter Platz terrace, folded into the city's own Stadtlounge, holds up to 30 more, standing or seated. None of that page's own copy mentions a wedding at all. As noted above, Hochzeit only appears on the Catering page. That tracks: a wedding party of any real size won't fit inside Rubens' own rooms, and this on-premises product reads like it's built for a birthday or a works do, not a reception.

It also, tellingly, prices the identical dishes higher. The Apéro- & Bankettkarte behind the on-premises product lists the same Rubens Hackbraten at 38.50 CHF rather than 34.50, the same veal rump at 48 CHF rather than 43.50, the same Fondue Chinoise package at 65 CHF rather than 58.50, and the same Pasta Plausch at 56 CHF rather than 48. Eating a Rubens catering dish inside Rubens costs more than having it delivered to a couple's own venue. That gap is one more mark against a delivery-first reading of the catering product: the cheapest version of the operator's own food is the one that leaves the building.

Notice, cancellation and who actually shows up on the invoice

Rubens asks for a week's notice on the actual menu choices, because the food is bought and cooked to order rather than held in stock, and the ordered quantity gets billed even if a few invited guests don't turn up on the day. Guest numbers are locked in 24 hours before the event and billed on that figure; a late increase is billed too. Cancel between 14 and 5 days out and the charge is 50 percent of the menu total; between 5 and 2 days it's 80 percent; the day before or the day itself, it's the full 100 percent. Glasses, plates, cutlery, other equipment, transport and setup and teardown are all itemized and billed on top of the food, which the terms frame as a transparency choice rather than a hidden markup, and every price printed is in Swiss francs including VAT. Allergies have to be flagged directly to the kitchen; the operator's own terms then disclaim liability for a reaction, worth knowing rather than assuming away. Vegetarian and vegan options run through the regular menu rather than sitting off to one side (tofu and vegetable curries, a vegan mascarpone-coconut dessert, a matching vegan side surcharge), which is a more useful signal than a single line promising to cater to allergies. Nowhere in the 11-page document, or on the Catering page itself, is a tasting mentioned. A couple who wants to taste the food before booking should ask, because Rubens doesn't say anywhere that it offers one.

The trio who sign both the Cateringkarte and the on-premises Bankettkarte, Geraldine Vonwiller, Sarah Feistauer and Mario Feistauer, have run Rubens together since February 2023, per the operator's own Team page. A fourth name, Daniel, appears only in both documents' closing signature line, and turns out, cross-checked against the Impressum, to be Daniel Schneider, the site's listed contact person rather than a fourth name on the floor. The Impressum names a different company again for the site's own copyright, JS Erlebnis-Gastronomie & Geschenke GmbH, while both the catering and the banquet terms are signed by "BBT Gastro GmbH." The write-up states that rather than guess which entity actually issues the invoice.

There's no English anywhere on the site (every page checked carries lang="de", no toggle, no /en/ path), so a couple planning a wedding from abroad should expect to deal with Rubens in German, or ask up front whether that's workable for contracts and the day itself. What the operator does publish is unusually specific for a caterer in this category: hourly staffing rates, a delivery flat fee, per-dish prices rather than a vague quote, and a cancellation ladder with real percentages attached. A couple weighing this caterer against a homepage tagline will get more from Rubens' own price list than from its marketing copy, and that price list, read in full, answers the one question the tagline leaves open. Staffed service is what's actually on offer. Delivery alone is what's left over for a couple who'd rather not have anyone from Rubens at the party.