Private chef and wedding catering FAQs

From £75 per head with a £449 minimum spend. That covers ingredients, menu design, the chef on the night, the equipment I bring, and a full kitchen clean-down. Travel is quoted with the menu, based on the distance from Rayleigh, and shown as one line on your quote before you commit — nothing is added later. Tell me the date, the headcount and the occasion and you will have the exact figure the same day.

Yes. I cook corporate Christmas parties at your office across Essex and London, from £39 a guest for a hot festive lunch to £75 for a plated three-course Christmas dinner, with chefs, waiting staff and crockery included and no VAT to add. The minimum spend is 30 guests. Corporate Christmas packages and prices.

Tell me the date, the headcount and the occasion. I sketch a menu around your table and price the whole evening, and you get one figure the same day. A written quote fixes the number before you commit — nothing is added later.

Travel is quoted with the menu, based on the distance from Rayleigh, and shown as one line on your quote before you commit — nothing is added later.

From an intimate dinner for two to a garden party of thirty. Most dinner-party tables are six to sixteen; hen parties and BBQs run larger.

Six to eight weeks for a Saturday in summer. Shorter notice is often possible, particularly midweek. Ask, because cancellations happen.

Across Essex, London, the South East and East Anglia, from a kitchen in Rayleigh. There are pages for Rayleigh, Southend-on-Sea, Leigh-on-Sea, Hockley, Benfleet, Basildon, Chelmsford, Brentwood, Billericay, Colchester, Saffron Walden, Bishop's Stortford, Wickford, Maldon, Loughton, Suffolk and Norfolk, but the area is not limited to them — send the postcode with your enquiry.

Yes. I arrive early, bring what your kitchen does not have, cook and serve every course, then clean down before I leave. If your hob has two working rings, that is workable — it has been before.

Yes. Most hen do bookings are in rentals. Send a photo of the kitchen when you enquire and I will build the menu around what is actually there — I bring whatever is missing.

Yes. Every menu is built to handle vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free within the same courses, so nobody at the table gets a visibly different plate. Tell me the requirements when you enquire.

Change anything. Swap a course, move a course, tell me a dish is not you. No charge for revisions. The forty-three sample menus in the library are starting points, not contracts.

All ingredients, sourced the day of your event; menu design and consultation; the chef and service on the night; all the cooking equipment I need to bring; and a full kitchen clean-down before I leave.

Five cold lunches a week, chef-made from scratch and delivered to your door on Sunday and Wednesday. Cooked twice weekly, never more than three days old, built to be eaten cold. £40 a week. They are paused for now: leave your name on the Meal Prep page and I’ll let you know first when they restart.

SS postcodes — Southend-on-Sea and the towns around it: Rayleigh, Hockley, Leigh-on-Sea, Benfleet, Canvey, Basildon. The boxes are made in Rayleigh, Essex. Send me your postcode using the form and I will confirm before you subscribe.

Thursday, midday. Anything ordered by then starts the following Monday. Your card is charged £40 at each cut-off for the week ahead.

Yes. The boxes are handed to you, not left on the doorstep, because that is the only way I can keep them cold. When I set off on a delivery day you get a message with a one-hour window. From the handover they are yours to keep cold: fridge straight away, eat cold on the day marked.

Tipsy Squirrel Events Ltd (company number 14694733) is a private chef and wedding catering business based in Rayleigh, Essex, run by chef Mike Sutton. It cooks private dinner parties, birthdays, hen parties, Christmas Day at home and sit-down wedding breakfasts across Essex, London, Hertfordshire, Kent, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.

Mike Sutton has worked in hospitality for over 20 years and trained under Gennaro Contaldo and Jamie Oliver. He founded The Taste Experience Catering (2011 to 2015), which catered weddings, corporate events and festivals of up to around 35,000 people, then ran Barrington Grill for nearly a decade, growing it to a team of around 30. He set up Tipsy Squirrel Events in 2024 and cooks every booking himself. More about Mike.

On yHangry, the private chef marketplace, Mike is rated 4.97 out of 5 from 144 reviews across 250 events (October 2026). See the yHangry profile, or read twenty recent reviews.

Yes. Tipsy Squirrel Events Ltd is a limited company registered in England and Wales (company number 14694733) and holds £5 million public liability insurance. Certificates are available to venues and clients on request.

A three-course sit-down wedding breakfast costs £75 to £140 a guest, depending on the menu and numbers, with chefs, waiting team, crockery and linen included and no VAT to add. See real prices and worked examples, or price your own wedding in about two minutes.

Yes. Where a venue has no kitchen I bring a full field kitchen: £20 a guest under 100 guests, £15 from 100. Three of the four wedding menus work from a field kitchen. How dry-hire catering works.

Any venue that lets you bring your own caterer. I keep a list of dry-hire venues in Essex, London, Hertfordshire, Kent, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire that welcome outside caterers, with each venue's catering rules and fees.

Yes. Every wedding menu has a vegan dish for every course, and vegan guests always get it, whichever dishes the couple chooses. Every dish has a full 14-allergen list. How dietary needs are handled.

No. Travel is included for weddings wherever your venue is, so a venue in Kent or Cambridgeshire costs the same as one in Essex.

Yes, but I take only one Christmas Day booking each year: lunch served at 1pm, every course cooked in your kitchen, and everything cleaned down before I leave. It is priced on request. Christmas Day at home.

Yes, in holiday homes and private houses across Essex and East Anglia. Hen party private chef.