We do not cook. We arrange the caterer, count the portions and run the service, which is a different job and the one that goes wrong.
Portions first. A buffet line serves about eighty guests in twenty minutes, so four hundred guests on one line is an hour and forty minutes of queue and a room of people who have given up. Four hundred guests want two lines and a separate hedhikaa and tea table, and if the functions are separate then each side needs its own. Nobody thinks about this until the queue forms.
Then the join with everybody else. The caterer needs the lane for a lorry, a place to hold hot food, water, bins and a route to the tables that does not cross the guests. Those four things are usually discovered on the night. We agree them at the venue visit and write them down.
All of our caterers are halal and no alcohol is served at any function we run, at any venue, including when a venue offers it. That is not a preference, it is the arrangement.
Catering coordination on its own is 6,500 rufiyaa for a single function.