Energized, enthusiastic employees are an integral component of your company’s success. The more energy your employees have, the more productive they are, allowing them to accomplish all they need to do and more. Catering lunch for your employees is an excellent way to show that you appreciate them and care about their needs—while helping them stay on task too. To do this successfully, selecting the right catering company is vital. Along with being healthy, a workday lunch also needs to be delicious and meet the dietary restrictions of your team.
In this guide to office catering, we’ve highlighted seven essential questions that can help you make sure your corporate caterer is right for your company.
1. How Do You Manage Dietary Restrictions?
Meeting the needs of people with dietary restrictions is a topic that continues to grow in importance. Having certain dietary restrictions shouldn’t mean that some employees get left out from lunch. If you have employees with dietary restrictions—such as veganism or gluten and dairy allergies—you need a caterer that can accommodate those requests. Not only does the caterer need to be able to provide ample food options, but they need to ensure that the food is safe for everyone. This means being careful to avoid cross-contamination during the preparation or serving processes.
The team at Sifted is well-versed in dietary restrictions. Our in-house chefs work to create menus that accommodate dietary restrictions and allergies to all major eight food allergens. We send out surveys during on-boarding and periodically throughout the year to ensure that all the food we serve your team is safe for everyone. All food is prepared and served with the dietary restrictions and preferences of your employees in mind.
2. How Often Do You Vary the Menu?
No matter if you order lunch catering a couple of times a month or you have lunch catered daily, your employees likely don’t want to eat the same thing every time. Find out how often the company varies the menu to ensure that all of your employees’ taste preferences are met.
At Sifted, we provide something new every day and our menus change weekly. Each day, our menus feature a meat-based and vegetarian option and we are always able to accommodate for the major eight allergens. Not only that, but we use seasonal ingredients, so our menus will change based on the produce available at that time of year.
3. How Do You Ensure the Right Amount of Food?
When ordering lunch, the last thing you want is to not have enough food for everyone. At the same time, you also want to make sure that you don’t have too much. Ask your corporate caterer how they make certain that you are provided with the right amount of food.
Sifted works to ensure that your team has exactly what they need. Our menu-planning is data-driven, allowing us to order exactly what we need in order to provide your team with the right amount of food. Additionally, paying attention to our environmental impact is rooted in everything that we do here at Sifted. We always aim to minimize food waste and pledge to operate at Zero Food Waste in all markets we serve.
4. Where Do Your Ingredients Come From?
Lunch shouldn’t just be about providing food for your employees: It should be about providing healthy, high-quality meals that benefit everyone’s physical and mental wellbeing. That’s why it’s important to know where the ingredients used in each menu come from.
At Sifted, we believe that using quality ingredients is an investment in the health and happiness of your team. We work with local growers in each of our markets to incorporate local, seasonal produce in every menu we create. We believe that fresh truly is best and we don’t hold raw ingredients in our kitchens for more than 72 hours. By providing the freshest meals possible, we can help to improve your team’s overall wellness and boost their productivity.
5. Can You Guarantee That You’ll Arrive on Time?
A late caterer can throw off your whole day. When you have a hungry team waiting and work that needs to be done, you want to feel confident that your catering company will arrive when they say they will.
Working with Sifted means that you work with a single vendor. This removes the burden of ordering. You just tell us what works for you and we take care of the rest. All of our meals are created in-house in the markets we serve, and we deliver the food ourselves, so we can guarantee that your food will arrive at the time you request.
6. Do You Handle the Entire Lunch Process?
Does the catering company simply deliver lunch and leave? Do they help set up, then leave you to deal with the cleanup afterward? Or, do they stay and handle the entire process from start to finish? Having to worry about setting up for lunch and then dealing with the cleanup after is a waste of your time and energy. You already have enough on your plate—that’s why Sifted handles the entire lunch process. We deliver, set up, and then clean up once everyone is finished. This takes the burden off your team and allows you to focus on doing the work you do best.
7. What Happens if There are Any Leftovers?
Even when the right amount of food is provided, there’s always a chance that there is some food leftover. What happens to it? After all, you bought the food, you deserve to know where your money is going.
Sifted strives to minimize food waste. Leftovers aren’t simply thrown in the trash. Instead, all perfectly edible leftovers are donated to local service organizations on your company’s behalf. Any food unsuitable for donation isn’t wasted either. We work with local composting companies and compost the remaining food scraps, allowing us to help reach our goal of Zero Food Waste.
Getting Started with Sifted
Your corporate caterer shouldn’t just be able to provide delicious meals, they should also be able to meet the specific needs of your employees and your company. For more information about Sifted and to learn just what we can do for you, contact us today!