Office catering used to be simpler when every employee was in the office Monday through Friday. Head counts rarely changed, budgets were easier to manage, and in-house catering was the norm. Now? With teams splitting their time between their home and the office, those old catering formulas are no longer as effective as they once were.
This shift in workplace attendance isn't temporary – it’s here to stay. As workplace managers juggle varying head counts, inflexible catering contracts, and changing employee expectations it's clear that office catering needs to adapt.
If you're noticing more food waste, hearing grumbles about boring menus that never change, or watching your team default to aggregators (who often miss the mark) instead of the catered meals provided to them, it might be time for a catering shake-up.
Here are ten clear signs that your hybrid office catering needs an upgrade.
Sign One: You’re having difficulty adjusting for fluctuating head counts
Traditional catering arrangements were designed for consistent (full office attendance) head counts – a model that rarely works in today's hybrid workspace.
When your employee count fluctuates day in and day out, with varying numbers of people coming in throughout the week, rigid catering arrangements can become a real pain.
You will recognise this if you're:
- Constantly running out of food on busy days, leaving late arrivals with limited or no meals to enjoy (nobody wants that)
- Throwing away excess food on quieter days
- Struggling to predict head counts with any accuracy, especially with last-minute changes to office attendance
- Finding it impossible to maintain consistent food quality while trying to adjust meal numbers
The solution lies in finding a catering provider who can truly flex with your daily needs. This means having the capability and know-how to adjust order quantities with short notice, while scaling food services up or down to match your office head count each day.
Sign Two: You’re seeing high levels of food waste
Nothing hurts quite like watching perfectly good food go to waste. In hybrid offices, traditional catering models often lead to unnecessary waste, especially when attendance fluctuates unpredictably. If you're regularly seeing untouched food in bins or dealing with increasing disposal costs, it might be time to rethink your approach.
The warning signs are clear:
- Large amounts of untouched food is being discarded after service
- Your caterer is constantly managing overflowing waste bins at the end of each day
- You’ve noticed increased disposal costs
- Your teams are commenting on the visible waste
The solution isn't just about ordering less – it's about creating a more responsive food service system. The right catering partner will work closely with you to understand your office's unique patterns, monitoring and adapting to your team's preferences. For instance, if they notice your team consistently favours vegan options over vegetarian dishes, they'll adjust the menu mix accordingly rather than continuing with a one-size-fits-all approach.
This level of attention to detail, combined with careful analysis of attendance patterns and consumption habits, ensures you're getting exactly what your team needs – no more, no less. And for those occasional instances when there are leftovers, responsible caterers will have established partnerships with food redistribution programmes, such as Olio, ensuring any surplus is managed sustainably.
Sign Three: You’re getting a lot of employee complaints about limited or inconsistent menu variety
When employees only come to the office a few days a week, every meal becomes an opportunity for connection. But with the abundance of high street options and food delivery services at their fingertips, your team won't settle for uninspiring catering.
Those long sighs in the lunch line, increasing numbers of packed lunches, or the sight of delivery drivers frequently visiting your office are all signs that your catering isn't hitting the mark.
Indicators that all is not right with your catering include the likes of:
- Frequent complaints about repetitive menu options
- Employees choosing to bring their own food despite the catering available to them
- Lack of excitement about office food options
- Increased use of food delivery services
For meals to truly bring teams closer, they need to be exciting and inclusive – catering to everyone's tastes and dietary needs. When everyone feels welcome at the table and genuinely looks forward to a meal, it creates the perfect environment for connection and collaboration.
The trick is finding a catering partner who can keep things fresh and compelling. They should be thinking a little outside the box with concepts such as:
- Seasonal, rotating menus that reflect fresh and available ingredients
- A diverse assortment of dishes catering to various tastes and preferences
- Special themed days that give people another reason to look forward to office days
- Regular menu updates based on employee feedback
- Enjoyable food experiences that brings everyone together
Sign Four: You’re finding vendor coordination complex across multiple catering services
If you're juggling multiple vendors for different catering needs – one for food services, another for coffee and snack orders, and yet another for special events – you're probably spending too much time on coordination.
When you're constantly managing different invoices, delivery schedules, and quality issues, something's bound to slip through the cracks.
You're likely experiencing this if you're:
- Spending excessive time coordinating between different vendors
- Dealing with multiple invoices, contracts, and payments; finance is not impressed
- Encountering frequent miscommunications about delivery times or quantities
- Managing inconsistent service delivery quality across different providers
- Constantly putting out fires when one vendor's delay affects another's service
A single, comprehensive delivered-in office catering approach can both unify and simplify this challenge by:
Streamlining all food-related services under one point of contact from a centralised kitchen
Providing consistent quality across food service, coffee or snack stations, and special corporate events
Reducing the complexity of administrative burden and paperwork
Offering clear communication channels and accountability with dedicated account managers and catering managers (it’s even more personalised)
Sign Five: You have low employee engagement with in-office meals
Empty canteens or dining areas and a surge in food delivery drivers waiting at the front desk at 1pm are clear red flags that all is not well with your office catering. When employees skip catered meals in favour of expensive takeaway or slapdash sandwiches brought from home, you're missing valuable opportunities for team connection.
Key warning bells include:
- Empty or underutilised dining areas
- Employees regularly eating at their desks
- Increased use of food delivery services
- Minimal social interaction during lunch hours
- Negative feedback about meal satisfaction
From a cultural perspective, quality catering is about so much more than just food – it's about creating experiences that draw people together and getting them to connect and step away from their desk to recharge and refuel.
Your dining space should feel welcoming and warm, not sterile and bland (or like a ghost town). When done effectively, office meals can become natural networking opportunities and office culture ignitors.
Sign Six: Your caterer is inflexible with menu customisation based on dietary needs
Today's workforce and workplace is more diverse than ever, and so are your teams’ dietary requirements. If you're struggling to provide delicious and varied options for vegetarians, vegans, or those with allergies to name a few, you're potentially making team members feel excluded.
Watch for these warning signs:
- Limited options for vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free diets
- Limited options for cultural preferences such as halal and kosher meals
- Recurring issues with allergen management
- Anxiety around food safety for those with serious allergies
- Lack of clear labelling and ingredient information
- One-size-fits-all approaches to dietary accommodations
Adaptable and inclusive workplaces need to offer multiple options for different dietary requirements every day, not just a simple vegetarian option or a less than desirable salad for those with allergies.
When everyone can enjoy a proper meal together, it strengthens team cohesion and workplace culture. Solutions like digital menu platforms make this easier than ever – allowing team members to plan their meals in advance and make informed choices that match their dietary needs.
Want to see how digital menu accessibility works in practice? Take a look at Fooditude's weekly digital menu to see how easy it can be to cater for everyone's needs.
Sign Seven: You’ve had enough with unreliable delivery and last-minute catering cancellations
Nothing disrupts a workday quite like delayed or cancelled catering. This is especially challenging when dealing with multiple vendors or relying on aggregators for large orders. Late deliveries lead to hungry (hangry) employees – which can directly affect the mood in the office.
Problematic patterns include:
- Frequent delays in food service times
- Mixed-up food orders as caterers in a rush are more likely to make mistakes
- Slow food preparation affecting service flow
- Inconsistent delivery schedules
- Last-minute cancellations
- Quality issues from rushed deliveries
The solution lies in working with catering providers who have their own dedicated delivery teams and centralised operations. When your delivery driver knows your office and route like the back of their hand, service becomes more reliable and personalised.
Sign Eight: Your caterer just doesn’t get your culture and lacks the level of personalisation you need
Different days might call for different catering approaches. Maybe, on Mondays, your employees need lunch and dinner because there’s a chance they will be staying late to work. Maybe, on Fridays, a big portion of your workforce leaves the office at 3pm and you want to offer sundowners the chance to celebrate a successful work week. Stiff, one-size-fits-all catering models can often miss these nuances.
Every office has its own unique rhythm and culture – and your catering should reflect this. When your catering solution isn't adaptable to your workplace vibe, it becomes glaringly obvious through signs like:
- The same service style regardless of attendance levels
- Missed opportunities for special occasions
- A one-dimensional approach to all office days, regardless of attendance
- Difficulty accommodating varying group sizes
- Limited flexibility for different types of food services (snacks, coffee, meals)
The best contract catering companies should adapt with your office's rhythm, offering food programmes that match each day's unique needs.
Sign Nine: Finance is on your back about the high catering costs
Fixed-cost contracts rarely make sense in hybrid workplaces. If you're paying the same per head amount regardless of attendance fluctuations, you're likely wasting a budget that could be better spent elsewhere.
Some of the prominent red flags include:
- Money down the drain from excessive food waste
- Regular budget deficits
- Frustration with minimum order requirements stipulated by your caterer
- Inability to adjust food services based on attendance
- Hidden costs for last-minute changes
- Complex contract terms that don't reflect your hybrid workplace and company structure
Look for caterers offering flexible contracts that align with your actual catering needs and requirements – not the other way round. This flexibility should extend beyond just meals to include all your workplace refreshments. There's no need to be locked into lengthy contracts for coffee machines or snack services that don't serve your changing needs.
The right catering partner will help you maintain flexibility across all services, ensuring you're only paying for what you need while maintaining quality throughout – from your coffee station to lunch service and everything in between.
This approach not only optimises your budget, but results in better service and a happier workforce who get exactly what they want when they want it.
Plus, your staff will get to enjoy truly great food, like this buffet we made earlier...
Sign Ten: You’re seeing a lack of nutritional or wellness-focused food options
When employees bring their own "healthy" lunches despite available catering, it's a sign your menu offering needs to be refreshed. Today's employees are generally more health-conscious than ever, but this doesn't mean meals should sacrifice taste for nutrition.
Consider this – people spend a significant portion of their lives at work, even in a hybrid setting. When your office facilitates healthier eating habits through quality catering, you're not just providing lunch – you're actively contributing to your team's long-term wellbeing.
This investment in your employees' health ultimately benefits everyone; healthier, happier employees mean a more energetic, productive workplace.
Here are the signs your current catering offering isn't measuring up:
- Limited nutritious options
- Lack of energy-sustaining meal choices
- Employees are bringing their own alternative meals
- Absence of nutritional information
Quality catering strikes the perfect balance between nutrition and flavour – there's no need to compromise one for the other. When meals are prepared from scratch using high-quality ingredients and proper seasoning, they naturally deliver both nourishment and satisfaction.
A skilled catering partner understands that wellness comes from real food, properly prepared. They should work closely with you to support your corporate wellness and health goals.
Fooditude and the Trade Desk – a hybrid catering success story
When The Trade Desk's London office found their traditional catering setup couldn't keep pace with their dynamic work environment, they knew something needed to change.
With a fast-growing team and shifting daily office attendance, their existing catering model was creating more problems than solutions – affecting their workplace culture and employee satisfaction.
Working with Fooditude, they implemented a flexible delivered-in catering approach that included:
- A food programme that catered to varying head counts based on office attendance
- Diverse menus that can be customised to match team tastes
- Scalable food services for everything from daily lunches to special events
- Pop-up food experiences to create excitement around office days
- Sustainable practices to minimise food waste
The new catering service made a clear and positive difference at The Trade Desk's London office. Shared mealtimes became a natural part of the workday, with teams regularly coming together over fresh, varied meals.
The flexible food service approach not only reduced food waste but also simplified the administrative side of things, with catering now working smoothly alongside their hybrid work schedule.
Read the full case study here. {insert once the case study is live}
Time to reassess your workplace catering?
If you've recognised some or all of these signs in your workplace, you're not alone. The good news? The right type of catering partner – one who understands your specific challenges and is flexible in their approach to meet the needs of your hybrid workforce – can work with you to establish a fun, happy and quality-driven food programme for your team.
Whether you're actively looking to change your catering approach or just exploring options, we're happy to share our delivered-in catering expertise. Let's have a quick chat about your workplace needs and how flexible catering could work for your hybrid team.
Get in touch with us today!
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