The question comes over the counter a few times a month: "Do you cater?" The answer is yes, within reason, and the reason is that we are a diner, so what we do well is breakfast and lunch for a crowd, made from scratch, delivered on trays. Here is what that looks like, and when to ask somebody else.
What we're good at
Breakfast for the office
The morning meeting that people actually show up for. Bagels we baked that morning with cream cheese and lox, wedges of quiche, a fruit cup, house granola, and carafes of fresh-squeezed orange juice and our Blizzard Blend coffee. Scale it by head count and we will tell you what a reasonable tray is.
Brunch for a shower or a birthday
A hosted brunch at someone's house, with the food done by us. Quiche, a pancake or French toast setup, breakfast sausage and peameal bacon, home fries, fruit, and bread. We can do a full vegan tray alongside it, since the seitan bacon, tofu scramble, and vegan French toast all travel.
The graduation-morning spread
Our busiest catering week of the year is UB commencement in May, when families in rented houses want breakfast for fifteen without anyone cooking. The graduation weekend plan has the full picture; the short version is call early, because everyone else does.
Lunch trays
Sandwich platters (the Reuben, the turkey club, the VLT, the falafel wrap), a salad or two, hand-cut fries if it is close by, and a tray of the Diner Pantry's granola for the afternoon. Good for a work lunch or a team that just finished a game.
How to ask
Email the diner with three things: the date, the head count, and roughly what kind of meal it is. We will come back with a suggested tray list and a price. Please give us a few days for anything over a dozen people, and more for graduation week. Bread is baked to order for trays, so the earlier we know, the better the bread.
Date, head count, and what kind of meal. We'll do the rest.
When to call across the parking lot instead
Here is the honest boundary. We close at three, we do not have a private room, and we do not have a bar. If your event is in the evening, needs a room with a door, or needs somebody pouring drinks, it is not a diner event, and we would rather point you to the right place than do it badly.
The right place is directly across our parking lot. Our sister restaurant has an upstairs banquet room for 20 to 100 guests with custom menus, a full bar, and a staff that runs rehearsal dinners, retirement parties, corporate dinners, and birthday banquets all week. You can book a banquet at The Steer for anything that starts after four, and they have written a small library of guides on how to plan each kind. They also handle funeral banquets, which is a call nobody wants to make and which they make as easy as it can be.
The practical split is simple: morning and midday, and anything that comes on a tray, is us. Evening, and anything that needs a room, is them. The two places were set up to cover each other, and events are where that matters most. A graduation breakfast here and the graduation dinner there is the most common version, and it means the family parks once.
One more option: the diner itself
For a small group, the best event we do is not catered at all. It is a booth in a 1952 dining car on a weekday morning, a round of hand-dipped shakes, and the whole menu. Bring eight people, sit in the back, and let the building host. It has been doing that since before any of us were born.