Office Team Lunches: A How-to Guide

Question: How do you bring a team together, boost morale, and please tastebuds all in one go?

Answer: The team lunch.

We talk a lot about food being the fuel employees need to do good work. But food is also about connection: a time to pause the work, to break bread with each other, to talk about stuff other than work. 

Why is this important? Teams that like each other tend to work better together, and a good team lunch can spark collaboration and improve your company culture. Oh, yeah, and it’s really yummy. What else can you ask for?

HOW TO PLAN A TEAM LUNCH

Before anything else, you’ve got to decide on the purpose of this gathering. Reasons include:

• Celebrations: Maybe someone got promoted, or someone reached a milestone, or it’s someone’s birthday.
• New teammates: Do you have a new colleague? A team lunch is a great way to welcome them.
• Teambuilding: Just hanging out and eating together can bring colleagues closer. 
• You’re hungry: Hey, sometimes you just want lunch.

Once you’ve nailed down your purpose, move on to budget and logistics. 

• Is this a one-off lunch, or will it be a regular (quarterly, monthly, or otherwise) thing?
• How much can you spend on the entire group, and how much per head? 
• What kind of dietary restrictions does your team have?
• Do you want to get food delivered or catered?
• Does your team include remote workers in different time zones, or people otherwise out of the office?

That last bullet tends to add a little bit of extra planning to any kind of meeting. Don’t worry — we’re here to help. 

VIRTUAL TEAM LUNCH IDEAS

Remote workers are part of the team, too, and they deserve the same connection as your in-office folks. Lunch can help make that happen…but how? What if they’re across the country?

This is where you put on your scheduling hat and figure out a time that works. If your team is on the West Coast and you’ve got East Coasters on your staff, between 11AM and 1PM Pacific time might be the sweet spot — it’ll just be a late lunch for those folks on the eastern seaboard.

Once the time is set, it’s time to plan the meal itself. You’ve got a lot of options:

• Themed menus. Encourage everyone to make a sandwich, pasta, or salad, and share their creations. This can get quite entertaining and even provoke deeply thoughtful discussion around the question we all must face: are hot dogs really sandwiches? 
• Meal delivery. We’d be remiss not to mention this, since it’s kind of our specialty. If your teammates are located within Waiter’s operating areas, we’d be happy to bring them delicious meals from restaurants of their choice, made to order. If not, you can provide delivery stipends to employees and let them choose meals from their local restaurants. 
• Cultural celebration. If team members have a favorite dish from their cultural background, encourage them to try making it. It’s a wonderful way to learn and bond (and may even inspire your next team lunch). 
• Play some games. Just about everything is online these days. Consider sending out a survey ahead of time and getting an idea of what people would like to do, if anything. Your team could try a virtual escape room or trivia (as a bonus, these activities encourage collaboration), take a class (like cooking or mixology), or even do a group yoga session. 

IN-PERSON TEAM LUNCH IDEAS

Maybe your entire team is in-office and getting together for lunch is no big deal. You can still make it an event they’ll look forward to — we recommend the following:

• Take it outside! Set up your team lunch in a picnic area or on the roof, if you’ve got the space and weather allows. You may need to do a little more wrangling as far as organizing seating goes, bringing up tables and chairs (or cushions, if your team doesn’t mind sitting on the ground) as well as something to provide shade, but it’s worth the improvement in mood sitting out under the sky can provide. 
• Pick a theme. Pizza parties are frequent standbys because they’re popular and fairly easy to put together. Other options include a summer picnic (complete with blankets and lemonade) or a food truck bonanza (calling in several local food trucks and letting your colleagues order what they like). You can go much further than this, of course, by picking a movie or TV show everyone likes or at least knows and encouraging teammates to bring dishes inspired by the story (yes, there are Star Wars and Game of Thrones cookbooks out there). 
• Build-your-own lunch. Taco bars come to mind first, but you can also create a burger bar or a “Build a Bowl” with greens, proteins, grain, and sauces. Heck, you could even go all-out and set up a sundae station. 
• Office potluck: Everyone brings a dish — it can be their signature piece or something meaningful to their culture, or just something they’ve been wanting to try. Everyone takes a portion and chows down.

HYBRID TEAM LUNCH IDEAS

Are your teammates split between remote and in-office? No problem! You just need to make sure everyone gets a piece of the pie.

• Match experiences. Bring in office catering and provide the same meal or vouchers to remote staff.
• Let everyone have some fun. The same activity options we described for remote teams apply to hybrid teams — you just need to make sure your in-office colleagues bring their computers. A livestreamed class, game, or (work-safe) show could be just the ticket to an entertaining team bonding session. 

THE SECRET TO A GOOD TEAM LUNCH

You’ve gathered the people and ordered the food. How do you make sure the lunch is a good one? By following one little rule:

Don’t talk about work at first.

Here, we’ll say it again: 

Don’t talk about work at first.

Focus on other stuff. How is everyone? What do they think of the latest superhero movie, or what are they reading? Does anyone follow sports? 

Some talk of work may eventually creep in. It’s hard to avoid it altogether; work is, after all, what has brought all of you together. But if this is a true team bonding lunch and not a catered meeting or workshop, then make sure to stick to more general topics, like the new software you’re all testing out or whether the company coffee machine is really haunted. 

REMEMBER TO FOLLOW UP

As with all things, a little planning goes a long way. Send out short surveys once the lunch is over to gather feedback that you can apply to future lunches. Keep your team involved in the planning so they feel they have some stake in it, and remember dietary needs and tech access for your virtual attendees. 

We might suggest not doing the same event or activity multiple times in a row unless everyone really, really likes it. You want these lunches to be events — change things up!

LET WAITER GIVE YOU A HAND…AND A MEAL

Want to bring your team together? Let the team at Waiter help. If you’re hosting people in-office or your remote workers are within our radius, we’d be delighted to bring your colleagues the kind of meals that will make them look forward to their team lunch. If you’re ready to put a meal on the calendar for the foreseeable future, look into our Recurring Catering. Want everyone to be able to choose their own meal and add-ons? The Custom Cafe is your answer. 

We’ll bring the food. All you have to do is start eating.