Holiday Catering: How One Mistake Can Spark a Major Outbreak

Holiday Catering: How One Mistake Can Spark a Major Outbreak

Holiday parties, office banquets, and family gatherings depend on caterers to deliver safe, delicious food at scale. Catering that feeds dozens or hundreds introduces operational complexity far beyond a home kitchen. Those complexities matter because a single slip, slow cooling, an underpowered warmer, a cross-contamination event, or a lapse in hand hygiene, can turn a festive banquet into a mass-illness incident.

Why Catered Holiday Events Are Uniquely Vulnerable

Catered events combine several risk multipliers:

Case Studies: How One Mistake Became Many Sick People

North Carolina Catered Thanksgiving Luncheon (2015)

Investigators documented an outbreak of Clostridium perfringens gastroenteritis after a catered Thanksgiving