The 26th of March was a big day for our team here at Hog Roast Earley. Not only were we invited to the Reading University Student Union’s annual Varsity Event, but we were also asked to cater for 800 guests!
To give you a little bit of background, this all-day tournament takes place around the same time every single year and sees the Reading Knights teams battle it out with their biggest rivals: the Oxford Brookes, through a series of 21 different sporting challenges in the hopes of being crowned the champions and, subsequently, taking home the legendary Varsity Trophy.
It’s always a thrilling day out for those involved, and this year, around 2,000 turned up at the Whiteknights Campus on Shinfield Road to observe and join in the festivities. And, as you can probably imagine, with so many people to accommodate, Hog Roast Earley wasn’t the only catering provider invited to take part in the ‘mini-festival experience’.
The main event organiser, Christine, had arranged for many different types of food, drink and snack options to be made available to the guests, giving them a wide variety to choose from. And from our Hog Roast Earley team, she had wanted a traditional hog roast option, as well as a veggie/vegan alternative, which our caterers were more than happy to provide.
With timing being everything at events of this scale, our catering manager James had planned the booking down to the minute. And leaving no room for error, he and the rest of the Hog Roast Earley team arrived at the open-air venue in the very early hours of the morning, where they spent the following 8 hours slow-roasting several full-size pigs on various HogMaster machines and chargrilling colourful vegetable skewers over low flames.
When it was finally time for the food to be rolled out, Hog Roast Earley was ready to go and, working swiftly and efficiently, they began serving fork-tender shredded pork, stuffing, crackling and applesauce rolls, or veggie skewers to a long queue of hungry guests! The food was so well received that some found it hard to stay away from our stall as the day went on!