Buffalo Wild Wings caters the way it runs a dining room, around wings and the sauce on them. For catering, that comes down to two platters ordered in party sizes: traditional bone-in wings and breaded boneless wings, each handspun in up to two of more than two dozen sauces and dry rubs, with carrots, celery and ranch or bleu cheese on the side. The part that decides whether an order lands is the sauce choice, because the sauces are the menu. Pick two that sit at the same heat and half the room is either bored or on fire; pick one mild and one signature and everyone finds a wing they want. Order it as a shareable spread for a launch, a game-day afternoon or a Friday win and Buffalo Wild Wings is one of the easiest crowd-pleasers you can put on a table. Order it as a tidy sit-down lunch and you have a saucy, hands-on pile of finger food that wants napkins, plates and a table nobody minds getting messy.
Two friends, Jim Disbrow and Scott Lowery, opened the first Buffalo Wild Wings in 1982 near the Ohio State campus in Columbus, after Disbrow went looking for the bone-in, sauced wings he had grown up on in Buffalo and could not find in Ohio. They called it Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck, a nod to the beef-on-weck sandwich served on a caraway-and-salt kummelweck roll back east, and customers shortened the unwieldy name to bw-3 within months. A third partner, Mark Lutz, joined six months in. The chain grew into a sports-bar fixture, is now part of the Inspire Brands family out of Sandy Springs, Georgia, and runs more than a thousand locations across all fifty states. That history matters for catering because the identity never drifted from the two things it opened on: wings, and a wall of sauces to put on them. This guide walks the platters, what the sauces do for a group, the sides and wraps around the wings, how much to order per person, where the menu hits a wall for a mixed-diet office, how ordering and pickup work, and where Buffalo Wild Wings fits against the other ways to feed a team.
Buffalo Wild Wings catering formats, platter sizes, sauces, sides, lead times and pickup or delivery availability vary by location and change over time. Order through buffalowildwings.com or a catering marketplace and confirm the current catering menu, quantities, timing, handoff options and the Allergen and Preparation Guide directly with the Buffalo Wild Wings nearest your office before you plan around them.
In This Guide
- How Buffalo Wild Wings Catering Works
- The Wing Platters: Traditional, Boneless and Party Sizes
- The Sauces Are the Menu
- Beyond Wings: Wraps, Dippers, Cauliflower and Sides
- How Much to Order by Headcount
- Where Buffalo Wild Wings Hits a Wall in a Mixed Office
- How to Order Buffalo Wild Wings for a Group
- Keeping Wings Good on the Drive Over
- Pros and Cons for Office Catering
- Who Buffalo Wild Wings Catering Is Best For
- Buffalo Wild Wings vs. Other Catering Options
- A Better Option for Recurring Office Meals
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Buffalo Wild Wings Catering Works
Buffalo Wild Wings sells catering as curated party packages built for a crowd, so you can put an order together in a couple of minutes without pricing out a stack of individual meals. Each restaurant caters against its own menu, so you pick the location nearest your office and order from what that store offers. If the packages do not fit, most locations let you build the order a la carte, choosing platters, sides and sauces piece by piece.
You can place a catering order on buffalowildwings.com, by calling the restaurant directly, or through a catering marketplace such as ezCater, DoorDash or CaterCow. The channel you use changes the checkout, not the food. One rule holds across all of them: this is drop-off catering. Nobody comes to staff a line, set out chafing dishes or serve. The boxes arrive, and someone from your office puts them on the table.
Plan around the notice window. Buffalo Wild Wings asks for a minimum of about twenty hours on catering orders, and it caps how late you can change an order at a handful of business hours before the event. A hundred and fifty wings in one flavor is a real load on a single kitchen, so give a big order more runway than the minimum and call the store to confirm it can hit your time.
The Wing Platters: Traditional, Boneless and Party Sizes
The catering menu turns on two platters. Traditional wings are classic bone-in New York style, fried and then handspun in your sauce. Boneless wings are white-meat chicken, breaded, fried and tossed the same way. Both come in party sizes that step up from around fifty wings to a hundred and to a hundred and fifty, and both arrive with carrots, celery and your choice of ranch or bleu cheese.
The bone-in versus boneless call is not just texture. Bone-in wings are the real thing, meatier and messier, and they hold their crunch under sauce longer, which matters on a drive. Boneless wings eat cleaner and faster, go down easier at a desk, and stretch further per pound because there is no bone, but the breading soaks up sauce and softens sooner. For a stand-and-graze celebration, bone-in reads as the event. For a room that has to get back to work, boneless is the tidier call. Plenty of offices order one platter of each and let people choose.
Each platter carries up to two sauces or dry rubs, and that choice does more work than the wing style. A single flavor across a big platter is the most common ordering mistake, because it turns a room of different palates into one vote. Split every platter across two flavors and order across platters so the full table spans mild to hot. The next section is the one to read before you check out.
The Sauces Are the Menu
More than two dozen sauces and dry rubs is the whole reason Buffalo Wild Wings is a catering pick rather than just a wing shop. The lineup runs from sweet and mild through the tangy middle to sauces built to hurt, plus dry seasonings that flavor without the wet coat. You choose up to two per platter, so a modest order can still cover a wide range of eaters if you spread the choices instead of doubling up.
One spread can feed a whole office if you build the flavors in tiers. Anchor the low end with a sweet or mild sauce that almost everyone will eat, a honey barbecue or a mild buffalo. Put a crowd-favorite signature in the middle, the garlicky or medium-heat one your team will fight over. Add a dry rub, a lemon pepper or a smoky seasoning, for the people who want flavor without a sticky coat and for anyone eating over a keyboard. Then, if your group has heat-seekers, add one genuinely hot platter and let it be the dare rather than the default. Four flavors across a few platters gives you a spread nobody can complain about.
Keep the sauce on the side when you can, or ask for lightly sauced. Wings tossed heavy and then boxed for a drive steam in their own sauce and arrive soft, and there is no way to re-crisp them at the office. Sauce on the side is the single change that most improves a Buffalo Wild Wings order that has to travel, and it lets the person who wants a wing dry-rubbed keep it that way. This is the same instinct behind ordering sauces and dressings separately in our party tray catering guide: the wetter it rides, the worse it lands.
Beyond Wings: Wraps, Dippers, Cauliflower and Sides
Wings are the headline, but the catering menu has enough around them to round out a table. Chicken wraps fold boneless wings, cheese, lettuce and sauce into a flour tortilla and travel far better than open wings, which makes them a useful anchor for anyone who wants a self-contained item rather than a saucy pile. Crispy chicken strips and dippers give you a plain-fried option for people who do not want their chicken sauced at all. Cauliflower wings are the closest thing to a plant-forward pick, breaded and tossed in the same sauces, though the caveat in the dietary section below applies to them.
The sides are built for sharing. Potato wedges and fries are the default starch and both come in party sizes. Mozzarella sticks, onion rings and fried pickles round out the fried-appetizer bench and photograph like a spread, which is part of the point when the order is doubling as a team moment. A party sampler pulls several of these together if you would rather not build the sides one by one.
None of this changes what the meal is. It is fried, hand-held, shareable food that suits a standing celebration, a viewing party or an afternoon pick-me-up. If your team wants finger food that works the same social way without committing the whole order to wings, our guides to finger food catering for office events and happy hour appetizers for the office cover the wider field.
How Much to Order by Headcount
Start from roughly six wings a person when wings are the meal, and about four when they are an appetizer or the sides are hearty. Boneless run smaller, so lean toward the high end of the range on those; bone-in are meatier, so the low end holds. The table below assumes you want people to eat and get back to work, not graze all afternoon.
| Headcount | What to order | Sauces to pick | Why it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6-8 (small team) | One 50-wing platter, wedges | One mild, one signature | The smallest party size covers a small room with two flavors and no waste |
| 12-16 (department lunch) | One 100-wing platter, wedges, a side | Mild, signature, one dry rub | Splitting the platter across flavors keeps one order from becoming one vote |
| 18-25 (all-hands) | A 150-wing platter plus a 50, mixed bone-in and boneless | Two mild-to-medium, one dry rub, one hot | Two platters let you span the heat range and offer both wing styles |
| Clean desk lunch | Boneless platters plus wraps | Dry rubs and lighter sauces | Boneless and wraps eat cleaner at a keyboard than saucy bone-in |
| Game day or happy hour | Bone-in platters plus the fried sides | Your loudest flavors, one hot | Nobody needs a tidy meal, so lean into the messy crowd-pleasers |
| 50+ (company event) | Several 150-wing platters, sides in multiples | A wide flavor board, one hot per few platters | Confirm capacity with the store first; one kitchen makes all of it at once |
For a big room across a long window, remember that fried food is a first-thirty-minutes item. Wings hold better than the fries beside them, but neither improves sitting out. If you are feeding a crowd over hours rather than a single lunch rush, look at the staged, replenished formats in our boxed lunch roundup and treat the wings as the opener rather than the whole table.
Where Buffalo Wild Wings Hits a Wall in a Mixed Office
This is the section that decides whether Buffalo Wild Wings works for your team, and Buffalo Wild Wings is direct about the limits in its own Allergen and Preparation Guide.
Everything fried shares the same oil. Buffalo Wild Wings does not run separate fryers, and the bone-in wings, boneless wings, cauliflower wings and the fried sides all cook in shared oil and get tossed in shared bowls. The company states that it cannot guarantee any item is free of an allergen and that nothing is certified gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan. Read that as the ceiling on every accommodation below.
Boneless wings contain wheat. They are breaded, so they are not gluten-free and not a fallback for anyone avoiding wheat. The bone-in wings are unbreaded, which sounds like a gluten-free option, but they share the fryer with breaded items, so they carry cross-contact and no celiac-safe claim. A dry-rub bone-in wing is the lower-risk choice, not a safe one.
The vegetarian bench is thin, and the cauliflower wings do not fix it. Cauliflower wings look like the plant-based answer, but they are breaded and fried in the same oil as the chicken and tossed in the same bowls, so they are not a clean vegetarian item, let alone vegan. Past the carrots, celery and a side, a vegetarian at a Buffalo Wild Wings spread is left hunting, and there is no meatless entree that stands on its own.
Sauces carry their own allergens. Several sauces and the ranch and bleu cheese contain dairy, and ingredients vary by sauce, so anyone avoiding dairy cannot assume a given flavor is safe. Check the current allergen guide for the specific sauces you plan to order rather than the menu as a whole.
No halal or kosher certification. Buffalo Wild Wings makes no such claim in the United States, so a team that keeps either is ordering from elsewhere.
Stack those together and the picture is clear. Buffalo Wild Wings serves an omnivorous room that eats gluten and does not need certification, and it serves that room well. If your headcount includes people who eat vegetarian or vegan, anyone eating gluten-free, or anyone who keeps halal or kosher, plan a second order from somewhere else. Our guide to ordering catering for mixed dietary needs covers how to run that split without making anyone feel like an afterthought, and if the standing brief is a lighter table, our healthy office catering guide is the better starting point.
How to Order Buffalo Wild Wings for a Group
- Start on the catering menu, not the regular one. Order catering on buffalowildwings.com, by calling the restaurant, or through ezCater, DoorDash or CaterCow. The standard ordering flow will sell you individual meals; the catering menu sells the party platters.
- Pick the location closest to your office. Menus, platter sizes, sauces and handoff options are set per store, so the location you choose determines what you can order and how fresh it arrives.
- Choose bone-in, boneless, or one of each. Bone-in reads as the event and holds up better on a drive; boneless eats cleaner at a desk. A platter of each covers both preferences.
- Spread your sauces, do not double up. Use both sauce slots on every platter and order across platters so the table runs mild to hot, with a dry rub in the mix for the no-mess crowd.
- Ask for sauce on the side when it has to travel. Lightly sauced or sauce on the side is the difference between crisp wings and steamed ones by the time the box reaches the conference room.
- Add the sides and the dips per head. Wedges, fries and the fried appetizers are separate, and so is extra ranch or bleu cheese, which always runs out first.
- Give a big order real notice and confirm it. Buffalo Wild Wings asks for around twenty hours minimum and limits late changes, so book early for anything at the top platter sizes and call the store to confirm the kitchen can produce it all for your time.
Keeping Wings Good on the Drive Over
Fried food is the least forgiving thing you can cater, and wings add a second variable most orders do not have: how wet they ride. A closed box of hot, heavily sauced wings steams itself, and the breading on boneless wings goes soft fastest. Reviews that pan Buffalo Wild Wings takeout are usually describing exactly this, wings that were crisp at the counter and limp by the time they were eaten.
Four moves fix most of it. Order sauce on the side or lightly sauced so the wings are not sitting in liquid on the drive. Favor bone-in and dry rubs for anything with a long trip, because both hold their texture better than sauced boneless. Crack the box lids as soon as the food is out so steam escapes instead of settling back onto the breading. And put the fries and wedges out first, since they fade faster than the wings and are worth eating while they are hot.
Pros and Cons for Office Catering
What Buffalo Wild Wings does well
- More than two dozen sauces and dry rubs, so one order can span the whole heat range for a mixed room
- Bone-in and boneless platters cover both the messy-celebration and clean-desk use cases
- Shareable, hands-on food that turns a lunch order into a team moment
- Party sizes scale cleanly from a small team to a company event
- Curated packages make a crowd order fast to place
- Broad national footprint, so the same order works across most of your offices
- Wraps, dippers and fried sides round out the table beyond wings
Where it falls short
- Shared fryers mean nothing is certified gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan
- Boneless wings are breaded, and the cauliflower wings are not a clean vegetarian option
- The vegetarian bench past carrots, celery and a side is thin
- Saucy wings degrade in transit, and heavily sauced boneless fade fastest
- Messy, hands-on food that needs napkins, plates and a table you do not mind
- Drop-off only, with no staff, setup or service of any kind
- No halal or kosher certification in the United States
- A single flavor across a big platter leaves half the room out, so ordering takes thought
Who Buffalo Wild Wings Catering Is Best For
Order Buffalo Wild Wings when
You are throwing a launch party, a playoff or game-day viewing, an intern welcome or a Friday-win lunch where the food is meant to be shared and a little messy. You are feeding a room of omnivores with no certification requirements. You want one order that covers mild eaters and heat-seekers at the same table. And you have somewhere people can stand, dip and use both hands without worrying about a keyboard.
Look elsewhere when
Your headcount includes vegetarians, vegans, gluten-free eaters, or anyone keeping halal or kosher. You need a tidy sit-down lunch people can eat at their desks in ten minutes. You are hosting clients and want food that presents formally on a plate. You are building a weekly rotation and cannot serve fried wings every time. Or the nearest location is a long enough drive that the wings arrive soft.
Buffalo Wild Wings vs. Other Catering Options
| Option | Menu breadth | Dietary coverage | Delivery & setup | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buffalo Wild Wings | Two wing styles, two dozen-plus sauces, wraps and fried sides | Omnivore only, shared fryers | Drop-off, no setup | A shared, sauce-forward celebration or game-day table |
| Raising Cane’s | One entree, one sauce, a few sides | Omnivore only, no vegetarian entree | Usually pickup, no setup | A no-debate fried-chicken Friday |
| A local wing or barbecue caterer | Full menus with proteins, real vegetable sides and desserts | Usually accommodating on request | Varies, many deliver and set up | The same game-day flavors with a vegetable column |
| Zerocater | Rotating menus across more than a thousand local restaurants | Dietary needs labeled and planned for | Delivery and setup handled | A recurring program that does not repeat itself |
Buffalo Wild Wings and Raising Cane’s land on the same shortlist whenever the brief is a crowd-pleasing chicken lunch, and the split is menu shape. Cane’s does one item and one sauce with almost no decisions to make; Buffalo Wild Wings hands you two dozen flavors and asks you to choose well. For a celebration where the variety is the fun, Buffalo Wild Wings wins. For a Friday where you want zero debate, Cane’s is simpler. If you are weighing chains more broadly, our Chick-fil-A, Panda Express and Subway alternatives guides lay out the rest of the field, and the Outback Steakhouse and Dickey’s Barbecue Pit guides cover the sit-down and smokehouse ends of it.
If it is the game-day flavor you want rather than the brand specifically, Zerocater’s barbecue catering directory and Southern catering directory list local kitchens that bring the same heat with a real vegetable side. Worth a look: Charred Wing Bar in Chicago, Firewater Sports Bar & Cafe near Austin, Cluck Smash in Glendale, Roaming Buffalo BBQ in Denver and Dipped N Smashed in Cliffside Park.
A Better Option for Recurring Office Meals
Buffalo Wild Wings earns its place on a celebration. Two dozen sauces, two wing styles and a spread built to share make it one of the easiest ways to turn a launch or a game-day afternoon into something people remember. Bring it in for the win, and it lands.
The trouble starts when you try to make it the standing order. The wings that make it great on Friday are the same wings you cannot serve every Tuesday, and no amount of ordering around the menu produces a vegetarian entree, a gluten-free plate or a lighter option for the people who want one. It is also drop-off only, so someone on your team handles the food every time, and the messy, hands-on format that suits a party fights a normal workday.
Zerocater was built for the other half of that problem. Menus rotate across more than a thousand local restaurants, so the team is not eating the same thing twice a month, and dietary needs are labeled and planned for rather than worked around. Delivery and setup are handled, so nobody spends a lunch hour on a pickup run. For one-off events, CaterAi builds a menu from your headcount, budget and dietary requirements in a chat, and you edit it until it fits. When the event has a run of show, corporate event catering covers the staffing and logistics, and how it works walks the whole process.
Several of the guides on this site pair well with this one if Buffalo Wild Wings is one option among a few you are weighing: lunch and learn catering, board meeting catering, the office manager’s guide to ordering catering, boxed lunch versus buffet versus family style, and the industry guides for law firms, tech companies and financial services. For per-head budgeting in a specific market, our cost guides for Chicago, Dallas and New York City give a realistic range, and the Dallas and Atlanta listicles name local caterers worth calling.
Plan your next team lunch with CaterAi
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Buffalo Wild Wings do catering?
Yes. Buffalo Wild Wings caters through curated party packages and a la carte ordering, built around traditional bone-in and boneless wing platters in party sizes. You can order on buffalowildwings.com, by calling the restaurant, or through a catering marketplace such as ezCater, DoorDash or CaterCow. Catering is drop-off, so no one comes to staff or set up the food.
What comes in a Buffalo Wild Wings wing platter?
Wings in your choice of up to two sauces or dry rubs, with carrots, celery and a choice of ranch or bleu cheese. Traditional platters are bone-in New York style; boneless platters are breaded white-meat chicken. Both come in party sizes that step up from around fifty wings to a hundred and to a hundred and fifty. Sides such as wedges, fries and fried appetizers are ordered separately.
How many wings should I order per person?
Plan on roughly six wings a person when wings are the meal, and about four when they are an appetizer or the sides are hearty. Boneless wings run smaller, so lean toward the high end on those, while meatier bone-in wings hold at the low end. Ordering one bone-in and one boneless platter is a reliable way to cover a mixed room.
How do the sauces work for a group order?
Each platter carries up to two of more than two dozen sauces and dry rubs, so the smart move is to spread flavors rather than double up. Anchor with a mild or sweet sauce almost everyone eats, add a crowd-favorite signature, include a dry rub for the no-mess crowd, and add one genuinely hot flavor only if you have heat-seekers. Four flavors across a few platters covers most offices.
Is Buffalo Wild Wings catering good for vegetarians or gluten-free eaters?
Not really. Buffalo Wild Wings uses shared fryers and states that nothing is certified gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan. Boneless wings are breaded and contain wheat, bone-in wings share the fryer with breaded items, and the cauliflower wings are breaded and fried in the same oil, so they are not a clean vegetarian option. Plan a second order elsewhere for anyone with those needs.
Does Buffalo Wild Wings deliver catering, or is it pickup?
Both are possible depending on the location and the channel you use. Ordering through a marketplace like ezCater or DoorDash often includes delivery, while ordering direct may be set up for pickup at some stores. Either way it is drop-off catering with no on-site staff, setup or service, so someone from your office puts the food out.
How far in advance do I need to order Buffalo Wild Wings catering?
Buffalo Wild Wings asks for a minimum of about twenty hours on catering orders and limits how late you can change one to a few business hours before the event. For large orders at the top platter sizes or for weekend events, give more notice than the minimum and call the restaurant to confirm the kitchen can produce it all for your time.
How do I keep Buffalo Wild Wings from arriving soggy?
Order sauce on the side or lightly sauced so the wings are not steaming in liquid on the drive, and favor bone-in wings and dry rubs for a long trip because they hold their texture better than heavily sauced boneless. Crack the box lids as soon as the food is out so steam escapes, and put the fries and wedges out first since they fade fastest.
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