Are you in charge of purchasing catering for office lunches? Here are five useful tips from our team of office caterers to help you cater well to large groups.
1. Consider The Food
When catering for office lunches or a corporate event, whether you’re doing sandwich catering or something else, the big thing to remember is to make the food easy to eat and to make it filling but not too heavy. You want people to be still able to function after lunch and not to feel so full and bloated that they can’t do their work after eating.
Also, avoid messy or noisy foods for minimal interruptions and issues.
2. Do Your Homework
It’s also important to remember to keep people’s special diets and food sensitivities in mind where possible. Some dietary restrictions could be life-threatening food allergies and, in other cases, it’s just a statement of preference. Provide plenty of gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegetarian lunch options. Have the gluten-free and vegetarian options plated separately and make sure to label them.
Whatever the case, it is important to respect the wishes of the guests to ensure that the office lunch is an enjoyable experience for everybody.
Food should be set up and prepared before the break begins. Consider having lunch or breakfast outside the meeting room. This will simplify the setup without disturbing the meeting.
3. Note The Setting
The physical setting where the lunch takes place needs to be adequately considered. For example, if it is in a boardroom, you need to consider the space available for platters, plates, and drinks, and people to move in and out around the food as they dish up.
It is also important to consider how the food will be served. If it is primarily a standing arrangement, it might be difficult for people to hold a plate and drink while also trying to eat.
There are various creative solutions for this, although one of the simplest is just to make sure that standing tables are available for people to put their plates or glasses down on. In situations with plenty of seating, this is less of a concern.
4. Keep It Sanitary
Nowadays, especially after Covid-19, people are much more cognisant of hygiene. Therefore, ensure that your office lunch catering solution comes with hand sanitizer and/or wet wipes that are made available to all guests. Make sure to include items such as serviettes and toothpicks as well.
To further ensure a sanitary eating environment, it is generally preferred and recommended that you serve single-serving finger food type meals instead of large family style meals where people have to share dishing up utensils and so on. Single-serving foods and individual meals are more sanitary and people tend to feel safer eating them.
Individually packed lunches can also help prevent long queues as well as help control portions sizes.
5. Get Help
While catering for an office lunch may be doable on your own, there are a lot of hidden complications that you may not be aware of or may not have time to deal with. Calling a professional caterer in to help ensure that everything is taken care of can relieve a lot of stress and remove a massive burden from your shoulders.
A good corporate caterer can do a significant amount of the heavy lifting, such as planning the logistics of food delivery, setting up and arranging menus to suit your budget, calculating the correct volumes of food based on the final headcount, as well as ordering, tracking, and scheduling. This can take a significant burden off your back and make the event a lot easier to deal with. Plus, it will most likely result in a much more well-received event that you can also enjoy.
Whether you’re going with sandwich catering or something a little different, don’t hesitate to get expert help and advice from us at Tall Poppies Catering in Sydney. We offer expert catering services that provide wholesome food and can save you a lot of hassle. Contact us today!
