15 Exciting Company Lunch Catering Ideas for Events at Your Office
When it comes to boosting company morale, it’s hard to beat the value of a catered lunch. Food brings people together in an almost primal way, creating an instant sense of community and shared purpose. But after a few pizza parties or boxed-burger meals the excitement fades. To keep your employees excited, you’re going to need to add some variety to your company lunch catering ideas.
We’ve got just the thing. We put our catering advisors to the test and asked them to come up with 15 ideas for anyone suffering from office catering ideas block. Here’s what they came up with:
Levantine: With inspired tastes originating from Israel to Turkey, the culinary delicacies of the Levant are becoming a seriously popular modern food trend. While classic options like baba ghanoush and falafel are always welcome, consider spicing things up with dishes like the minced lamb and cherry goodness of a kebab b’il karaz or the deliciously aromatic roast chicken dish musakhan. Your team can’t fault you for being unoriginal. This is about as far from a subway sandwich as you can get.
Empanadas: In Spanish-speaking countries, chefs take their empanadas seriously. Hundreds of regions have their own unique recipe for these wonderfully varied stuffed pastries. While most variations involve a filling of ground protein (usually beef or chicken) with a mix of seasonings, there are also vegetarian and seafood versions, as well as sweet, dessert-style empanadas.
Gourmet Mac & Cheese: When it comes to great comfort food, it’s hard to beat a hearty helping of macaroni and cheese. The humble mac ’n’ cheese is also the ideal dish for showcasing mouth-watering new flavor combinations, from blue cheese sriracha to Cajun-style crawfish. It’s just the thing to bring your teams together during those stress-filled crunch times.
Lobster Rolls: If you think lobster is exclusively a fine-dining menu item, the people of New England have some news for you. Lobster is even better on a grilled hot dog bun, soaked in a butter sauce, and flavored with lemon juice, salt and black pepper. It’s not a specialty you often see outside of the northeast, but it’s definitely worth seeking out.
Fish & Chips: This staple of the British fast-food industry has found a niche audience here in the U.S., thanks in part to the growing food truck trend. It’s a simple meal — battered, deep fried fish served on a bed of “chips” (or just french fries for the non-anglophiles out there) — but as with every popular dish, there’s plenty of room for a skilled chef to put their own personal spin on it.
Teppanyaki: This distinctly Japanese style of grilled food is also known as “hibachi-style” here in the U.S. Made popular by the showmanship of Japanese steakhouse chefs — onion-ring volcanos and utensil juggling do make for a fun dining experience, after all — there are also plenty of Japanese restaurants out there with excellent teppanyaki options.
It’s hard to beat grilled steak, shrimp, and chicken over a perfectly cooked noodles or rice, even if you’re fairly certain that your catering order doesn’t come with a chef who will happily launch pan-seared shrimp directly into your mouth.
Roti Canai: If there’s one dish from traditional Southeast Asian cooking that’s ready to make the leap into mainstream popularity, it’s this Malaysian-Indian fusion. Roti canai is a thin, flaky flatbread traditionally served with an incredible variety of curries and stuffings. It’s also one of those rare dishes that can please both the omnivores and vegetarians in your office, with plenty of great options available to each.
Pierogi: Eastern European food has gotten kind of a bad rap here in the West, in part because mid-20th century communism didn’t exactly prioritize haute cuisine. But if your area has a vibrant Slavic or Baltic community, you might just want to consider ordering some pierogis for the next office lunch. These filled dumplings are the perfect flavor-delivery platform, with countless savory and sweet variations. Order a side of gołąbki (stuffed cabbage rolls) and some nalesniki (essentially a Polish spin on the crêpe) and you have just the meal for even the most novelty starved workforce.
Paninis: It’s hard to argue with simplicity. Simple can be delicious. Sure, you could argue that a panini is just a lightly grilled sandwich, but that’s missing the point. A great panini should be simple, combining artisan-baked bread with the perfect balance of ingredients. When a great restaurant puts a panini on the menu — even if it just seems like a fancy ham-and-cheese or a steak-and-mushroom — odds are that it’s the best hot sandwich they know how to make.
Sliders: What’s better than having one tasty sandwich for lunch? Having a variety of little tasty sandwiches, of course! Sliders take the essentials of a meal-sized dish and shrink them down to appetizer-size portions. This means that everyone at the office can sample the BBQ sandwich, the hamburger, the roast turkey club, and whatever else the caterer has on offer. Sliders are also extremely common items on lunch menus, making this one a little easier to find in some areas than say, lobster rolls or roti canai.
Breakfast for Lunch: One of the best parts about being an adult is being able to eat whatever you want, whenever you want it. The office lunch is a perfect time to lean into this, giving your employees and coworkers the opportunity to scarf down all the breakfast classics they never have time to make for themselves. Who wouldn’t want scratch-made biscuits and sausage gravy as a lunch option? Or a double-stack of flapjacks with eggs and hashbrowns on the side? Time to channel your inner child.
Stuffed Baked Potatoes: If there’s one food that virtually everyone can agree on, it’s the unassuming-yet-satiating baked potato. Covered with heaps of chili, sour cream, and sharp cheddar cheese, it’s the quintessential omnivore’s lunch. At the same time, even the strictest vegan diets allow for a surprising variety of baked potato toppings, like a spicy black bean chili that just might win over a few die-hard meat lovers. Even with just a pat of butter, and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper, it’s hard to turn down one of these foil-wrapped delights. Setting up a baked potato bar is a snap for most caterers, making it one of the most stress-free options on this list for everyone involved.
Charcuterie Buffet: Looking for a lunch option that feels both casual and classy? How about a self-serve spread of excellently preserved, intensely flavorful meats paired with gourmet cheeses, perfectly crusty breads, and fresh fruits? Charcuterie is having something of a renaissance in food culture, so why not take advantage of it? It’s also one of the rare catering options where cleanup is never an issue, as there are no dips or sauces to spill all over the office carpet.
French Classics: There’s a reason that the iconic dishes of French cuisine are continually being revisited and reinvented by the best chefs in the world. The French understand great food. From the salty, intense flavors of duck confit to the vegetarian-friendly rustic perfection of ratatouille. Add in crowd-pleasing favorites like herb-crusted pommes frites and endless crêpe options, and your workers will happily proclaim “C’est si bon!”
Greek: The great thing about Greek cuisine is that doesn’t need much in the way of evocative adjectives to sound delicious. Just imagine the aroma of these dishes being set up for your company’s next catered meal: savory pork souvlaki (grilled pork skewers); fresh pita with a side of tzatziki (creamy cucumber-yogurt dip); spanakopita (spinach pie); dolmathakia (stuffed grape leaves); domates yemistes (tomatoes stuffed with meat and rice); and the sweet-and-sticky scent of baklava for dessert. Hungry yet?
While not every option on this list will be available in every city, a surprising amount of them will be. Creating a memorably delicious meal for your company lunch is often just a matter of being willing to try something new. It’s also a great way to get to know your city’s food scene, and to introduce your workers to the exciting meal opportunities that surround them every day.
Like this post? Check out 15 more catering ideas on Fooda’s blog.
