BEO (Banquet Event Order)

The venue’s internal order listing every detail of a function: timings, room set, menu, bar, AV, charges.

How it works in practice

Once a function is contracted, the hotel or banquet hall sales manager turns your requests into a BEO. It goes to the kitchen, the banquet captain, the bar manager, housekeeping and the in-house AV desk. Those departments do not read your emails. They read the BEO, usually printed and posted in the back corridor the week of the event.

A typical BEO lists the room name, access and end times, the room set (for example rounds of 10, head table, a dance floor), the menu course by course, dietary counts, bar type and hours, linen colours, staging and AV, and a charges block with unit prices, the service charge and tax. Large events often have several BEOs: one for the reception, one for dinner, one for a late snack.

In Ontario and the GTA

Downtown Toronto hotels commonly add an 18% service charge to food and beverage on the BEO, and that charge is itself subject to 13% HST. Read the charges block with a calculator, not a glance. In our experience, BEOs for a Thursday or Friday function usually arrive one to two weeks out, with the guaranteed count due a few business days before the event.

How to handle it

1. Ask for draft BEOs early, as soon as the menu and room set are chosen.
2. Check every line against your run of show: doors, dinner start, bar close, room release.
3. Check the room set against your floor plan, including stage size and FOH position.
4. Recalculate the charges block: unit price × guarantee, plus service charge, plus HST on both.
5. Return corrections in writing and ask for a revised BEO, not a promise that “it will be fixed”.
6. Sign only the final version and bring a copy on the day.

Questions to ask

• Who is the banquet captain on the night, and will they have this exact version?
• Is the bar close time the last pour or the time the bar is struck?
• Does the guaranteed number allow any overage, and at what price?
• Are AV and staging on this BEO or a separate in-house AV contract?

If the event is outside a hotel, ask the caterer for the equivalent document. The name changes; the job of reconciling it does not.