Your boss has charged you with planning an upcoming corporate event and wants it catered.

In our world, this is a daily occurrence. But maybe you’ve never had to plan a big or small event for your company—much less organize canapes, charcuterie boards, munchies, drinks, fruity water, napkins, servers and the rest. There’s a lot to consider and the pressure on your daily work life can feel overwhelming.

What kind of corporate event are you planning?

Let’s look at the details you’re working with. We’ll ask you prompting questions and work from there.

How many people will be attending your corporate event?

Are you planning a small, medium or large corporate event? If you’re feeding a hundred influential people over Happy Hour perhaps a wide variety of finger foods is best. Individual meals may not make sense for large groups, but canapes, charcuteries, finger foods or even family-style sharing catering may. If you have an intimate event for ten leaders of different companies, perhaps easy-to-serve and easy-to-eat meals are best. Perhaps something individually packaged makes sense.

Where is your event taking place?

If the event isn’t taking place at your office, hopefully you have a venue and idea for what kind of rentals you’ll need. That is, your office already provides the space, washrooms, perhaps kitchen facilities, tables, chairs and meeting rooms that you may need to host your corporate event. But does a new space have all of those things? Based on the event space, what kind of catering makes the most sense? Are you limited in any way by the catering you can provide?

When is your event taking place?

Consider the date, time of the event, season and length of time of your corporate event. Are they expecting to be fed a full meal over the entire course of the day-long event? Is your Happy Hour event providing light snacks and drinks? If it’s a multi-day corporate event, what meals will the attendees be expecting to eat altogether? Consider how long your corporate event goes for and how many catered meals, drinks and snacks make the most sense.

What is the goal of your event?

Consider who will be attending your corporate event and why. Is the event for a small group of co-workers? A large group of potential investors? Young, hip brand advocates? Your company’s entire global leadership team? Consider not only how many people you are catering for, but who and why. For example, think of whether you’re trying to show your event attendees a good, fun time, to impress or wow them, to go above and beyond the usual, or to feed them at this mandatory event.

What kind of corporate event catering makes sense for this occasion?

Based on your answers to the questions above, does your corporate event catering need to:

• Organize and meal plan for a multi-day event
• Feed event attendees individual, personalized, dietary-friendly meals
• Provide a variety of easy-to-eat finger foods
• Keep attendees focused and productive in meetings with coffee and treats
• Connect attendees with sharing, family-style meals
• Celebrate success with a group toast and party foods
• Be easy-to-eat during presentations and training
• Provide a welcome break between events
• Be transportable if attendees want to take meals outside or on-the-go

Do the attendees have any dietary requests or restrictions?

If your attendees have allergies, dietary preferences and requests, does it make sense to provide a wide variety of foods or let attendees choose their own meals based on some parameters that you provide, such a budget and date to order by?

How much or little work do you want to do?

Many catering companies, Foodee included, have tailored meal plans and entire concierge teams to suit your needs and make sure your catering is delivered smoothly and on-time. You can plan the whole event, catering included, yourself, you can involve the event attendees by getting them to choose what they’d like to eat, or you can opt for full-service corporate event catering. You decide how much meal planning you want to do and work setting up and serving the corporate event. Or, we can do it all for you. Easy as pie.

Where do you want your corporate event catering to come from?

At Foodee, we partner with owner-operated restaurants and make customized meals that are perfect for individuals, sharing, transporting and event catering. These are some of the hottest, new local restaurants in your city. In other words, your catering won’t be the same old same that’s been around since the Tupperware 50s. Our restaurant partners not only have delicious food but are also set up for success and can handle small, medium, large and very large orders (with a little bit of notice).
Plus, all of our catering comes in sustainable packaging with labels, napkins and utensils that we set up for you. This means you can feel good about doing your corporate responsibility for this catered event because you’ve sourced food locally and used sustainable packaging.

To summarize, here are our tips for ordering corporate event catering meals:

• Avoid anything messy, overly-complicated, daring or demanding
• Consider the type of food that your occasion calls for
• Do your attendees want to share, pick here and there or eat their own meal?
• Communicate timeline and menu plans to event attendees ahead-of-time
• Consider your catering footprint by ordering locally and sustainable packaging
• Consider how much time and effort you want to spend meal planning
• Choose foods that are transportable and easy-to-eat
• Consider the time, date, season, length, meal times and location of your event

Happy planning and good luck!