How to Order Lunch for the Office Without Losing Your Mind

Ordering lunch for your team is supposed to be a simple administrative task. But if you’re an executive assistant (EA) or office manager who does it regularly, you know it rarely feels that way. Between chasing headcounts, fielding complaints about the food, managing dietary restrictions nobody told you about, and praying the delivery shows up on time, it has a way of taking over your entire day.

And you’re not the only one who feels that way. We reviewed hundreds of Reddit threads by executive assistants and office managers who openly discussed this exact problem. 

However, we found that the admins who stopped dreading this task were the ones who stopped treating it as a new decision each time. They built a system and let it do the heavy lifting. 

Follow along to learn how to create your own system. 

The Real Problem is Decision Fatigue

In a thread on r/ExecutiveAssistants with over 80 upvotes, one EA put it plainly, “My executive tends to have a lot of meetings with food. I usually get catering but am getting sick of having to plan this so many times a month.”

The replies flooded in from people who felt the same way. Not because catering is particularly challenging, but because doing it from scratch every single time is a time suck.

Another EA in a separate thread that pulled nearly 500 upvotes wrote, “I am so tired of catering. The specialty meals, the random dietary needs, the complaints. Bosses completely underestimate how much time this takes.”

In a thread titled, “I HATE the food aspects of this job,” the most upvoted comment (737 upvotes) said, “Someone always has a complaint if you’re catering for a group.”

If any of this sounds familiar, you are not alone. And more importantly, there is a fix with actionable steps that will actually make a difference in the way you order for your office. 

Step 1: Build a Vendor Rotation and Stop Choosing Every Week

Rather than recommending platforms or offering cuisine tips, the most common piece of advice from experienced EAs was to stop ordering from scratch each time.

One EA described her system, saying she gives each week a specific catering theme: “Mexican, Italian, and so on—just order a variety and always include vegetarian. Makes life so much easier.”

Another said, “I used to use a caterer who sent out their menu quarterly, and I could just email them what I wanted and when. They would show up and handle everything.”

The pattern is the same in both cases: Pick three to five vendors you trust, rotate them, and add them to a calendar. Deciding “what should we order this week” is no longer a decision because it’s already been decided: it’s Italian week. This creates a completely different cognitive load when you don’t have to make a choice each time. 

As for the cuisine itself, the Reddit community has a strong consensus here, too. Build-your-own options, like taco bars, Mediterranean bowls, and BBQ buffets, repeatedly came up as the crowd-pleasing default because they solve both variety and dietary-restriction problems at once. When everyone builds their own plate, no one goes hungry and almost no one complains.

Step 2: Collect Dietary Restrictions Once and Keep a List

This advice came up in thread after thread. The admins who have figured this out all landed on the same answer: Provide a Google Form during onboarding and update it annually.

From r/ExecutiveAssistants, one commented, “I have a spreadsheet and a form that I have all new hires fill out when they start, so I can easily cover all the bases.”

From r/AdminAssistant, another said, “Keep a list of people’s dietary restrictions. Maybe a Google Form or something of that nature, and send it out once a year to be updated.”

The key here is “once.” You are not asking people before every order. You collect the information, store it somewhere accessible, and reference it when you need it. The form takes minutes to build, but it will save you hours over the course of a year.

As a general rule when ordering, always include a vegetarian option and something that is gluten-aware, even if nobody on your current list needs it. People do not always disclose restrictions until the food is already there.

Step 3: Use the Headcount Formula

The most-upvoted thread we found on the logistics of food ordering was from an EA who was mortified when she ran out of food at an all-hands meeting after 20 years of always having leftovers.

The advice that came up most often was to confirm your headcount 24 hours out, then add 10 percent. One EA explained it this way: “I always add five people to my count because my boss had a bad habit of inviting extra people on the fly, and I didn’t want to run out of food.”

For specific quantities, let the restaurant guide you. One commenter noted, “I save myself the hassle and take the restaurant’s recommendations. If they cater, they’ll tell you how much to order for your group size.”

For hybrid offices, specifically, use RSVPs rather than total headcount. Send a quick form or Slack message asking who expects to be in the office and would like to be counted. It takes 90 seconds and removes the guesswork entirely.

The Goal: Turn Ordering Into a Process

If ordering office lunch feels like a drag, it is probably because it lives entirely in your head, from the vendor choices and dietary needs to the quantities and individual preferences. Every time you place an order, you’re going back to the drawing board. 

The admins who stop dreading it have made it a documented, repeatable process. They set vendor rotation on their calendars, place dietary restriction lists on a shared drive, and use a headcount formula. They only make these decisions once. 

If you want to make the process even easier, it’s time to turn to a meal program for recurring office deliveries, which removes almost all of the coordination work. Waiter.com’s corporate meal programs let you set a schedule, manage dietary needs across your team, and order from a rotating set of restaurants, without starting from scratch every week. The only decision you make is how often you want lunch delivered.

That is what “set it and forget it” actually looks like for office catering.

One More Thing: It Is Okay to Lower the Bar Slightly

One of the most honest comments we came across was from an experienced EA who said she used to drive herself crazy trying to make everyone happy. Her solution: “I let the caterer or restaurant choose. They are the experts. They know their bestsellers. My only requirement is that there is a vegetarian option.”

You are not a chef, a nutritionist, or a professional event planner. You are an EA or office manager who has a hundred other things on your to-do list. A lunch that arrives on time and has something for everyone is a success. It does not have to be remarkable every time.

Simply build the system, establish rotations, and maintain the list of dietary restrictions. And most importantly, allow yourself to stop treating this like it requires your full creative energy every single week.

Ready to take the coordination off your plate? Waiter.com has been handling corporate meal delivery since 1995. We offer full menus, full-time drivers, and flexible programs built for teams that order regularly. See how it works at waiter.com.