It’s one thing to provide excellent food services for customers, and it’s another to be nationally acknowledged for it.
Burton’s Catering does both.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has experienced the food the Thames-business was nominated for the Outstanding Wedding Food Truck award at this year’s Wedding Industry Awards, held in Wellington on June 7, where they snapped up the win.
But for Burton’s Catering owners Kris and Elliot Burton, it came as a shock.
“I was actually a little bit surprised to be honest,” Kris told The Profile.
The food connoisseur said there might have been a chance for them in the Outstanding Wedding Caterer category, but for the food truck side of things: “I didn’t think I was going to get that one”.
However, Burton’s Catering is no stranger to accolades of this sort, following their win in 2022 for the Outstanding Emerging Wedding Business Award.
A “long-time passion” for food is something that propels Kris in her work.
She believes the thing that sets their food truck apart from other vendors was the fact they worked on the outside of the truck, not the inside, she said.
“So we can set up anywhere. We’re not limited to anything.”
The award-winning foodie said Burton’s Catering specialised in paddock weddings, and while they offered a fine-dining service with things such as walk-around canapes, they didn’t have just one set style.
“We’re so versatile in what we do.”
One big thing they offered clients was for them to supply their own catch and gather, she said.
For example, if they’re hunters, they can supply their own venison, she said.
One bride from a previous wedding supplied a wild pig she hunted and caught and Burton’s put it on the spit for them.
But there were other ways the Burton’s team provided top services to their clients.
An event Kris said she’d never forget was a wedding they catered at the Grotto in Hahei on the Saturday night just before Cyclone Garbrielle.
Burton’s had their marquees up to do family-style catering laid out on everyone’s tables, while it was windy, rainy and “the trees around us were falling down and snapping”.
Kris said a lot of team building happened during that event.
“That will be one of the weddings that I’ll never forget because look [at] what happened after that event.
“You know, the roads closed. It changed everybody’s life for such a long time.”
It was clear why Burton’s Catering kept winning awards.
The new accolade was significant “not just for myself” Kris said, but also shone a spotlight on the place Burton’s came from.
“The Coromandel Peninsula actually has really good vendors. We kind of get forgotten about.
“Everybody wants to get married in the Coromandel Peninsula, but they outsource all the vendors,” she said.
There could be hundreds of weddings in the Coromandel over the summer period, and not all the local vendors were known about, she said.
“There’s other vendors around here that have won awards before. It’s actually making people recognise that the Coromandel Peninsula have amazing vendors of their own.”
