How does one cater an orgy?

December 2, 2021 9:38 PM

How do catering companies manage staffing for sexually explicit events?

Do they only hire staff who are willing to work any type of events? Do they ask their staff? Are there special catering companies that handle this kind of thing?

Question posed mostly out of curiosity, we're not actually planning an orgy. The next episode of Party Down in our queue is titled "Nick DiCento's Orgy Night", although we haven't watched yet, so no spoilers please.

posted by matildatakesovertheworld to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Organisers of sex parties know the right companies to work with to organise the bar in my experience. The catering companies aren’t chosen at random - usually there’s a long term prior connection. The managers I’ve worked with are upfront with their staff, who they already know to be queer friendly and sex positive - often they’ve attended previous events.
posted by ozgirlabroad at 10:16 PM on December 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

I worked in a bathhouse in the 2000s. The sex stuff never had catering since, uh, it's maybe not the best to mix a big meal with it, but we co-hosted a big international fetish week every year. The event was distributed over one big hotel, the bathhouse, and a handful of clubs, so most of the catering was for reception-type events on the convention floor of the hotel.

It should come as no surprise that the people who run these businesses and events are a tightly knit group, and also all of them are pillars of their respective communities. The bathhouse owner was on the neighborhood board, part of the chamber of commerce, and knew everyone in all the surrounding neighborhoods. In my time there, the catering and hospitality services were always, as an unwritten rule, from this pool of local or regional connections. Gay butcher, gay baker, gay candlestick maker.

I imagine a lot of these events operate in a similar way. It's about connections, bot just thumbing through the yellow pages for a catering listing.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 12:34 AM on December 3, 2021 [8 favorites]

A dear friend of mine helps organize furry events and I get to hear all the good gossip. Apparently the catering and bar staff companies they worked with at first all were used to BDSM events and were expecting way more explicit sex stuff, but it turned out the overlap between okay with kink and okay with furry is not as thorough as managers thought it would be. So the next year, because furries pay so damn well, these companies were committed to getting the right folks in, and asked about cosplay and nerd experiences as well as kink events. It went much better for all involved. So anecdotally there is a network of food service companies that all talk to each other about sexually explicit events and it’s a regular part of the business, to the point where other things are compared to it.
posted by Mizu at 1:13 AM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

In my experience, sex parties keep the food and the sex separate.

This is partly for hygiene, and partly so that attendees can get a snack even if they're not in the mood to be around sex right that minute. But it also makes services like catering easier to arrange — if you wanted it, you'd put it in a semi-public space where everyone was clothed. The caterers would still know they were catering a sex party, but they wouldn't actually be exposed to the sex.

You would still have to find caterers who were chill, because big sex parties are a legal gray area in lots of places. But that chill could be limited to "I know they're fucking over there, and I don't mind because it's over there." It wouldn't have to extend to "they're fucking right in front of me and I'm stuck here watching," which would be a deeply uncomfortable and arguably unethical position to put someone in.

Other services are the same way. If a party takes over a floor of the hotel, there are usually semi-public spaces where housekeeping is permitted but everyone is clothed, and separate private spaces where the sex happens and where housekeeping agrees not to go. Maybe the private places are just specific rooms or suites, or maybe they're a whole hall or larger that's screened off. Guests drop off their dirty bedding in the semi-public area for housekeeping to pick up, and guests or organizers bring clean bedding back into the private area. That way, housekeepers still need to be chill, but they're not being exposed to other people's sexual behavior in a way they didn't sign up for.

(Also, parties like that pay the hotel extra and also tip housekeeping extremely well, partly to ensure chill-ness and partly because they go through unspeakable amounts of bedding.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:33 AM on December 3, 2021 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: So the next year, because furries pay so damn well, these companies were committed to getting the right folks in, and asked about cosplay and nerd experiences as well as kink events.

Did the catering companies have to hire specifically for this 1/year event? Or were they able to find folks from within their existing staff? That's the bit that seems tricky - you might not want to hire folks based on their willingness to work one event, but if you don't, you might not be able to do that event
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 7:30 AM on December 3, 2021

At BDSM oriented sex parties in the early 2000s in the Bay Area food was not catered. The organizers may have food but it's like self serve snacks and drinks from a grocery store spread out in the kitchen.
posted by latkes at 7:35 AM on December 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

(Yeah, having said what I said about catering, my experience is that the vast majority of sex/kink events bring grocery store snacks, and if someone's bringing food to a semipublic area for someone to put pants on and go get, it's a pizza guy and not a caterer.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:08 AM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

I read Peter Sagal's so-so book The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them). One of the things that he does is goes to a house where swingers regularly host sex parties. Definitely not the same as a full-on orgy I think but he does talk a little bit about the food. The ones he learned about self-catered. A few excerpts.

the real difference between the Swingers' Shack and a bar is that at a bar somebody you meet might have come just for a drink or to watch a game on TV. Here, you had to bring your own liquor, on which you wrote your name with a Sharpie, and the only TV in the place was show-
ing hard-core porn, adding a sometimes discomfiting bass note of grunts and moans to the peas-and-carrots babble going on around us. No: with apologies to Ross's nice spread of Hershey kisses and a $29.95 chocolate fountain, the only reason people came to the Swingers' Shack was to get it on.

Ross and Rachel take your sixty bucks — legally, a voluntary donation to help cover expenses — and invite you to hang up your coats and put your self-supplied liquor bottle on the table near the plates of supermarket-bought snacks and candies. They give you a tour of the Shack.

posted by jessamyn at 3:17 PM on December 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

Adding this to the list of things I never knew I was curious about. Thank the MeFi newsletter.
posted by dg at 9:10 PM on December 23, 2021