There are quite a few choices to sift through when you want to treat your employees to lunch. To dine in or to dine out, that is the question. And even if you do land on bringing food in for your team, there are a plethora of ways to do that. Beyond the typical boxed lunches and buffets, even food trucks have become intriguing options for office lunch delivery. Which is the best option for the midday meal?
Here, we’re answering that question. Whether you are planning for an important meeting or you’re simply treating your everyday crew, office lunch delivery fills a wide variety of needs. A good business lunch delivery service adds a touch of professionalism and class to your event. Giving the best experience to your team or guests can communicate how much you value them, and office lunch delivery can make that process super easy.
First, let’s tackle the ins and outs of, well, ins and outs.
In or Out?
Taking a small group out to a restaurant for lunch is a nice gesture, and everyone will likely enjoy the change of scenery. However, it’s not a great option for big teams. You’d have to be very strategic in choosing a restaurant that can accommodate large groups, and then you’ll have to make sure everyone can get there from the office. It’s a lot of coordination. Plus, the travel time will either eat into your lunchtime or your working hours, even if the group is small and easy to handle.
When there’s an important meeting, taking everyone out to a swanky restaurant is usually the go-to move. There’s definitely something to be said for impressing a client or executive with an upscale eatery. Business lunch delivery doesn’t suit every single situation — there are still times where going out is the way to go. However, you can still have an impressive lunch in your very own office. If you’ve got someone from out of town visiting, business lunch delivery can help them get a better feel for your office.
Office lunch delivery solves all of these issues. Let’s dive into more detail in the next section.
The Perks of Office Lunch Delivery
As you’ve just read, trying to take the team out for lunch will have you running into a lot of different pitfalls. You can avoid them with business lunch delivery. Not only will the whole team save a lot of travel time, but it can also bring them together in new ways.
Improves Office Culture
Bringing in lunch is an especially helpful move for new teams or teams with new members. Sharing a meal is a classic and effective way to get to know somebody, and treating your new teammates to office lunch delivery can go a long way toward making them feel welcome. Instead of an intimidating new place, the office becomes a place of warmth and sharing and delicious food!
You can use business lunch delivery as a way of encouraging teammates to socialize and get to know others they might not have typically lunched with. If you’ve got a long meeting going through lunchtime, bringing in food can be a big pick-me-up and help the team remain focused and energized for the task at hand. There are lots of ways business lunch delivery can improve the culture and cohesion of your team, and it’s one of the main reasons to order lunch for everyone.
Build relationships within and across teams with an in-office lunch, and watch the benefits spread into the work you do. It might not seem like much, but it can be a natural place to start.
Promotes Health
Healthy office lunch delivery options can also be a boost to your team’s well-being. Facilitating their choice to fuel their brains and bodies with high-quality lunch options can benefit everyone. In the afternoon, they won’t be sluggish or sleepy, they’ll be energized. This can be one way to try and increase morale and productivity on your team.
Of course, it goes without saying that you’re not going to make any major changes to your team’s eating habits with one business lunch delivery. However, offering a healthy lunch to your office is certainly not going to hurt! It’s a great idea to facilitate good choices where it’s appropriate, and having a fresh, healthy lunch menu is one way to do just that. Partnering with the right office lunch provider will let you give your team tasty and healthful food.
Wide Selection
As opposed to some of the other options we’ll talk about in later sections, office lunch delivery can have enough options to make the whole team happy.
When you’re ordering business lunch delivery, make sure you’re choosing dishes so that everyone can find something to suit their diet. You should know about any food allergies your team has before you place an order for business lunch delivery. Avoid those allergens when you can, and if you opt for a buffet-style corporate lunch, make sure things are clearly labeled. You should also try to incorporate vegan and vegetarian options into your menu if possible. It’s difficult to please everyone, but at least having options that work with everyone’s diet is a place to start.
Other forms of office lunch delivery make the selection even easier. You might be able to find a boxed lunch option where everyone can choose their own meal.
Superior Convenience
We’ve touched on this several times already, but it deserves its own section, too. Having lunch come to you ensures that you’re spending your time in the best way possible, and once the meal’s over, you can all get back to work efficiently.
Not all office lunch delivery is the same, though. There are logistical concerns with both boxed lunches and a buffet-style meal. If you’ve chosen boxed lunches, then you need to make sure the right lunches get to the right people, and if you’ve opted for a buffet instead, you need to have everything set out so people can easily make their own plates. The caterer might be able to help you with this — if that’s something you need, make sure that’s a conversation you have early on.
As long as you plan ahead, office lunch delivery is super convenient at all stages of the process, from ordering to cleanup.
Potential Drawbacks (and how to avoid them!)
One thing you might be hesitant about with office lunch delivery is the space. Your workspace might not have the best setup for laying out all the food or everyone sitting together to eat. However, if you get creative with it, most conference rooms can fit the bill.
Of course, the biggest issue some face with office lunch delivery is the selection and quality of food. Office lunch catering sometimes has a reputation for dry, tasteless meals. When you work with a premium provider like our team here at Butler’s Pantry, however, you won’t have to worry about anyone going back to their desks unsatisfied with what was on offer. Business lunch delivery is not synonymous with disappointment.
Cleanup is another thing you might be worried about when ordering large lunches into the office. When you go out, it’s the staff’s job to get rid of trash and wash dishes, but when you bring the mess into your office, then you’re on the hook for cleanup duties at the end of the meal. As long as everyone pitches in, though, it shouldn’t be too big of a hassle. Just make sure you plan ahead and have enough trash bags for the size of your group!
Once you’ve cleaned up the trash, you’ll also have to have a plan for any leftovers that might be lingering after everyone’s had their fill. Ordering the right amount of food to begin with is a great place to start, but if you’ve got more than you can store, see if you can send anything home with some folks, or keep it on-site for some people who don’t want to worry about lunch the next day instead of just throwing it all out. Not everybody’s thrilled at the prospect of leftovers, but for some people, an office lunch is the gift that keeps on giving!
Office Lunch Delivery Options
You still have some decisions to make once you’ve chosen business lunch delivery for your next office event. Here, we’ve got the most popular providers of office lunches and the relative pros and cons of each. They’re not all created equally! Some are better suited to very specific circumstances, while others are natural fits for a wide variety of offices and teams. Read on for all the specifics to help guide your choice.
Restaurant vs Catering Company
Lots of restaurants allow for group orders, and they’ll even deliver to your office. The options range from typical fast food to more sophisticated fare, but no matter what kind of restaurant you choose, office lunch delivery is not their main attraction.
However, a catering company is an expert in the field. Catering is all they do. When you use them, you’re more likely to get experienced service. Even if business lunch delivery isn’t the most common kind of service the catering company offers, all events share the essentials. If they can do much more intricate and intensive events like weddings, then they can certainly pull off business lunch delivery.
Food Trucks
Another option for on-site lunch that’s been gaining in popularity in recent years is the food truck. It’s easy to see why these meals-on-wheels have been so trendy — they’re great ways to get small restaurants out to serve more people in a community. Often, these are authentic slices of a specific type of cuisine, and the results can be an exciting theme for an in (or outside!) office lunch.
However, the downfalls of choosing a food truck for business lunch delivery should also be pretty obvious. Lots of offices don’t have space conducive to the food truck’s operation. And if the weather’s not nice, nobody’s going to want to stand outside waiting for their food.
Also keep in mind that a food truck is going to have limited offerings. Unless you want to hire multiple trucks to cater your office lunch, you’re going to have to make peace with not having a lot of different options for your team to choose from.
A food truck day can be tons of fun, but the circumstances have to be just right. Otherwise, it can quickly turn into a miserable mess.
Delivery vs Pickup
We already covered the relative pros and cons of going out to eat with the team versus bringing in a catered lunch, but now, let’s discuss how having your in-office lunch delivered can be beneficial instead of sending someone to go and pick it up.
It might be a slightly more affordable option to go to the catering service and pick up lunch for your office, but that poses a lot of extra problems, too. Depending on the size of your team, you might need to enlist extra help to carry and transport everything back to the office.
Business lunch delivery services take care of all that headache for you. It might come with a small upcharge or extra fee, but for many corporate teams, it’s worth the extra convenience.
Now you’re ready to order office lunch delivery.
With all this in mind, you’ve got everything you need to plan a great lunch for your team. You know the benefits and drawbacks of bringing lunch into the office and the main ways people go about doing that. You should be prepared to host a lunch that brings the team closer together and promotes wellness in a variety of ways.
Start your search for office lunch delivery services right here at Butler’s Pantry. Our team has ample experience with a wide variety of catering options, and corporate lunches are no exception.
Buffet or boxed, hot or not, whatever options you choose for your office lunch delivery day, you and your group should be thrilled with the result.