Whether it’s your office’s busy season or crunch time before a big campaign push, sometimes you and your co-workers have to work late into the evening. You may already expect to be fed dinner catering because your company is awesome—or it might come as a new, yet entirely welcome gesture.

Why should my company (or the company I work for) provide free dinner catering?

The simple act of offering overtime workers dinner catering (ie. ordering in dinner for the team and paying for it) shows just how much a company values the extra time and effort spent on creating great work, being productive and working overtime. Employees have committed to going the extra mile and the company offers a small reward or acknowledgment for that act.

And instead of encouraging employees to break their workflow to go and grab takeout, having dinner delivered right to the office means that they can focus on what they do best while staying productive and connected as a team.

What are some easy dinner catering ideas for the workplace?

For this blog post, we’ve categorized our dinner catering ideas based on what night of the week you’re ordering catering for and whether you’re celebrating, working hard or feeling overworked and tired as a team.

Fresh and healthy dinner catering ideas

Let’s say that your global team has an evening meeting to accommodate employees who work overseas. Everyone is focused, productive and trying to stay fit and healthy this time of year. In other words, order something fresh and healthy. We’re thinking a variety of different hearty salads, fun healthy bowls or even some fresh, local sushi would do the trick.

Depending on what city your office is located in, you’ll have many delicious local restaurants to choose from. Here are a few top dinner catering picks in major Foodee cities:

• Greek avocado salad with a side of fried cauliflower from Ya Hayati, Austin
• Fallin’ in love bowl platter from Recess, Atlanta
• Omnivore sushi platter with classics like the avocado cucumber roll, California roll and salmon avocado roll from Hapa Sushi, Boulder

Warm and hearty dinner catering ideas

Now let’s say that everyone in your office is fighting the cold and flu season and it’s the final countdown before launching an important marketing and sales campaign. That seems like a great time to order something warming and healthy for your waning, tired and sick team. Order a few curries, soups and/or stews to share and give your company a wide variety of dinner catering to choose from.

Here’s what we’re drooling over in the warm foods department in several Foodee cities:

• Large buffet with coconut chicken, naan, spiced lentils, cabbage and more from Biju’s Little Curry Shop, Denver
• Steamed and fried dim sum with sharing-style dan dan noodles from Xian Noodles, Austin
• Family style meal with lentils, vegetarian jhalfrezi, butter chicken and more from The Host, Toronto

Fun and easy dinner catering ideas

Sometimes it pays to let loose and celebrate with your office. Let’s say that it’s the end of a great quarter or Happy Hour at the end of a particularly tough week—or it’s just a Tuesday night and your whole team is still working hard. Why not order something fun and treat your office to a beer on the house? For the good (and bad) times when pizza, pasta and burgers are an absolute must, here’s what we’re thinking about (a little too often):

• The Zeus pizza, the standard pizza and arugula salad to share from The Parlour, Vancouver
• Homemade garlic bread, lasagna tray, and the spring mix salad to share from Baraonda Ristorante and Bar, Atlanta
• Share some chicken parm, meatballs, spaghetti and caesar salad from Difranco’s, Denver

Surprise your office to dinner on the company some time. It’s a simple, relatively inexpensive gesture that goes a long way. Take a break with your hardworking team, break bread, share a laugh and reconnect over good food. That’s what sitting down to dinner should be all about, after all.

How to find dinner catering in your city

To find out which restaurants in your city offer dinner catering through Foodee, follow these steps:

1. Go to www.food.ee. Make sure you’ve signed up and are logged in. If you haven’t created an account yet, watch this quick video on how to create an account.
2. Hover over CITIES in the top left corner and select your city.
3. We’ve handpicked the best local restaurants in your city—and here they are! But let’s refine our search to find dinner catering.
4. Select DIETARY & CUISINE FILTERS.
5. In the FILTER BY FEATURE section of the drop-down filters, select DINNER. You can also filter based on diet, feature, or cuisine.
6. Scroll down to view all of the Foodee restaurants in your city that are open for business in the evening.

Learn more about how to order with Foodee in our super easy, step-by-step blog post.