You may have seen waiters sailing towards tables, holding silver platters aloft. More importantly for you as a planner, you may have been charged for it on your master account. Professional waiters are adept at several service styles; the most popular is called "French." But there is some confusion on just what French service is. It only gets more confusing when you throw butlered and Russian Service into the mix. Here is a walkthrough of what all these fancy names really mean: First, there are two types of French service – Cart French and Banquet French. Cart French is what most people are familiar with because it is most commonly used in fine-dining restaurants.

While French cart service and Russian service both prepare food tableside, in Russian, the food goes on platters for the guests to select their own food and in French cart service the food is placed on individual plates before being brought to the table. Butlered and Russian both allow guests to select their own food from a platter, but the platters are assembled in the kitchen for butlered and tableside for Russian. The most important thing is for the planner and the caterer to have the same understanding. The planner should be aware that these styles take more time and usually cost more.