Most catering menus started life as restaurant menus. A kitchen
builds dishes for people sitting at tables, then works out how to fit them into
a half pan and survive a car ride. Lunch Wired skipped that step. The Centennial
kitchen has no dining room, so every item on the menu was designed from the
start to travel, hold, and get set up in somebody else’s conference room.
half pans built for transport, not plates adapted from a dining room.
For a Denver-area office, that distinction shows up in small ways all week.
The food arrives in a format the kitchen planned for. The driver works
for the caterer rather than an app. And the menu is ordered as a build-your-own
matrix, which means a weekly program can pull a different lunch from the same
vendor for a month straight.
How Lunch Wired Ended Up Catering Instead of Serving Lunch
Jordan Drori opened Lunch Wired in August 2011 after watching relatives run a
similar business in Florida and deciding Colorado could support one. The first
version was a lunch counter in spirit: sandwiches, a burger, a curry sandwich,
food you ordered fast and ate at your desk. Delivery and pickup only.
The kitchen happened to sit near the Denver Tech Center. Offices in the
surrounding buildings started ordering, then started ordering for twenty people
instead of one, then for a standing Thursday meeting. Drori followed the demand
and rebuilt the business around corporate orders. Family members took on the
rest of it, running front-of-house and deliveries, writing the ordering
software, keeping the books.
The kitchen ended up with an unusual shape. Bread gets baked in house,
meats get prepared in house, and the sauces and spreads are made in house, all
of it aimed at orders that leave the building. There is no lunch rush to serve
and no dining room to fill.
The Menu Is a Matrix, Not a List
Structure matters more here than any single dish. Lunch Wired
builds catering around a protein, a sauce or marinade, a base, and toppings,
and most combinations are live. The same skirt steak ships with a fajita rub, a
teriyaki glaze, or a Vietnamese marinade of rice wine, tamari and garlic. The
same barbecue sauce runs across chicken thigh, chicken breast, pulled chicken,
pulled pork, meatballs, tofu and zucchini planks.
marinades: the skirt steak ships fajita-rubbed, teriyaki-glazed or in a
Vietnamese marinade.
Proteins on the catering side include chicken breast and thigh, pulled
chicken, pulled pork, pork loin, skirt steak, barbacoa, shrimp, beef and pork
meatballs, beef meatloaf, ground beef, Italian sausage and chicken parmesan.
Sauces span barbecue, fajita, teriyaki, Korean barbecue, Vietnamese, sweet
chili, marinara, alfredo, creamy pesto, romesco and a sharp cheddar and gouda
blend. Bases cover linguini, penne, cavatappi, brioche buns and rices in white,
cilantro lime and lemon herb.
Sides and salads round it out: a house salad, Caesar, Greek and an Asian
crunchy salad, roasted broccoli, green beans, asparagus and Greek potatoes,
stir-fry vegetables, fajita peppers and onions, mac and cheese, salted edamame,
house-made potato chips in a few seasonings, and brownies to close. The cuisine
range on the Zerocater listing reflects the spread: Greek, Vietnamese, Mexican,
barbecue, Japanese, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, Italian and North
American.
For an office running a recurring program, the matrix is the whole value. A
menu committee that would otherwise rotate through four vendors to avoid
repetition can pull four distinct weeks out of one kitchen, with one invoice and
one delivery relationship. If you are building that kind of rotation, our
office manager’s guide
to ordering catering covers how to structure it without burning a day a week
on logistics.
Formats: Trays, Boxes, Grab-n-Go and Buffets
Lunch Wired runs several menus, and picking the right one matters more than
picking the right dish.
| Format | What Arrives | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Build-your-own trays | Half pans of proteins, bases, sides and toppings, set up on your counter | Team lunches, all-hands, anything where people serve themselves |
| Boxed lunches | Individually packaged sammiches, wraps, salads, greens boxes and power bowls, each with a dessert | Conferences, training days, hybrid splits, working lunches on a clock |
| Grab-n-go | Packaged salads, bowls, sammiches, snack and protein boxes, parfaits, reheatable hot dishes | Staggered schedules, fridge stocking, teams that eat at different hours |
| Breakfast | Bakery platters, continental spreads, hot items, build-your-own breakfast bars, coffee and juice | Early meetings, morning offsites, quarterly kickoffs |
| Full buffet service | Staffed service with setup and cleanup, plus rented grills, carving stations and beverage stations | Company-wide celebrations, holiday parties, client events |
| Seasonal and custom | A menu the executive chef and concierge team build around your occasion | Milestones, appreciation days, anything the standard list underserves |
Everything on the boxed line comes individually packaged and includes a
dessert, which makes it the obvious pick when the room splits between
people in the office and people joining remotely. Our guide to
boxed lunches for hybrid
and distributed teams and the
conference and
training day playbook both apply here. If you are still deciding between
formats, start with
boxed lunch versus buffet or
the three-way boxed
versus buffet versus family style comparison.
How Lunch Wired Handles a Mixed-Diet Room
Vegetarian coverage here runs parallel to the meat line rather than sitting
off to the side as an afterthought. Tofu, zucchini planks and a black bean patty
take nearly every sauce and marinade the meat proteins do, so the vegetarian pan
arrives as the same dish in a different protein rather than a consolation salad.
Falafel, salted edamame, roasted vegetables and the composed salads extend the
range.
several vegetarian items that scale to a full room rather than a single
guest.
On the gluten side, the base list carries a gluten-free penne and a
gluten-free bun alongside the standard pastas and brioche, which lets a
gluten-free eater take the same protein and sauce as everyone else. That beats handing
someone a plain salad. Read our
gluten-free office catering
guide and the
vegetarian office catering
guide for how to brief a caterer on this, plus
vegan office catering if your room
needs it.
One caveat holds for any shared kitchen. Options on a menu are not the same
as an allergen guarantee, so a severe allergy needs a direct conversation about
the specific item and how it gets prepared. Our guides to
ordering for mixed
dietary needs and
allergy-safe boxed lunches cover
the questions to ask. Teams tracking macros will find the
keto,
healthy office catering and
halal guides useful alongside.
The Delivery Operation Is Part of the Product
Lunch Wired runs its own drivers rather than handing the last mile to a
courier app, and the difference shows up on arrival. Setup comes included at no
extra charge: the team arranges the food and the serving utensils and makes sure
the spread looks right before leaving. Nobody on your side unpacks bags at
reception.
Standard delivery slots run in 30-minute windows, and the team tightens that
to 15-minute windows on early-morning breakfast orders. Breakfast can land as
early as 6:00 to 6:15 a.m., which covers a pre-market meeting or a kickoff that
starts before the building fills up. Catering pickup and delivery run on
weekdays from early morning to the end of the business day, and weekend catering
gets arranged by phone rather than booked online.
The order form also asks the questions that trip up a delivery. Loading dock
location, security desk procedure, suite number: share them up front and the
driver arrives with what they need instead of calling from a lobby. If you have
run catering into a badge-access building, you know how much time that saves.
Billing works the same way, with an invoice on every order and room for PO
numbers and a named billing contact.
Before You Order, Check the Map
The question people forget to ask: is your
office actually inside the delivery radius? Lunch Wired caps delivery at roughly
20 miles driving distance from the Centennial kitchen, which covers the South
Denver Metro and the surrounding area. Plenty of Front Range offices sit outside
that line. Confirm your address before you build a menu, and call rather than
guess if you are near the edge.
Inside the radius, the coverage is thorough: Arapahoe, Denver, Douglas and
Jefferson counties, including Centennial, Greenwood Village, the Denver Tech
Center, Englewood, Littleton, Lone Tree, Parker, Aurora, Lakewood, Castle Rock
and Castle Pines. Pickup at the Centennial kitchen stays available on any order
if you would rather collect it yourself.
Lead time is the other planning constraint. Give the kitchen at least 24
hours on a standard order and more on a large one. Last-minute requests
sometimes work, so ask instead of writing them off.
Who Lunch Wired Is Ideal For
A strong fit for: South Denver Metro and
Tech Center offices running a recurring lunch program, teams that need real
variety from one vendor, rooms with a meaningful vegetarian or gluten-free
contingent, early-morning meetings that need breakfast before 7 a.m., companies
that want invoicing and PO numbers rather than a card checkout, and events that
need staffed buffet service with setup and cleanup handled.
Look elsewhere if: your office sits
outside the South Denver delivery radius, you need same-day catering with no
notice, you want a single-cuisine specialist rather than a broad American
catering menu, or your event needs the caterer to supply alcohol, which Lunch
Wired does not do even when it provides bartender support.
How to Order Lunch Wired Catering
Direct. Lunch Wired takes orders through its own site and by
phone. You pick a menu, customize the order, choose a delivery window and check
out. For anything custom, a themed event or a standing program, the Catering
Concierge team builds a proposal around your headcount, dietary needs, format
and timing. Companies with standing orders can open a corporate account rather
than paying order by order.
Through Zerocater. Order Lunch Wired from its
Zerocater vendor page, where the current menu and
live pricing sit alongside the rest of the Denver network. That route makes
sense when Lunch Wired is one vendor in a rotation rather than your only one,
when you want one invoice across several caterers, or when you need onsite staff
and decor that a drop-off caterer does not handle. You can also describe the
event to CaterAi and have it build the menu, book staff
and plan decor in one pass.
Lunch Wired and Zerocater
Lunch Wired is one of the Denver-area partners in the Zerocater network, and
it fills a specific slot: the dedicated corporate caterer with a broad menu and
its own delivery operation. For a rotation, pair it with restaurant partners
that bring a sharper single-cuisine point of view.
Teriyaki Madness in
Denver covers the teriyaki bowl lane,
Capriotti’s in Parker brings
slow-roasted turkey subs, and
Everbowl in Greenwood
Village handles superfood bowls and smoothies. Their spotlights go deeper:
Teriyaki Madness,
Capriotti’s and
Everbowl.
Browsing by cuisine is the faster way to fill gaps in a rotation. Lunch
Wired’s own range touches
North American,
barbecue,
Italian,
Greek,
Mediterranean,
Mexican,
Japanese and
Vietnamese catering, and each
directory lists the other Denver-area vendors working that cuisine.
For planning the wider program, start with
how much office catering costs in
Denver and our roundup of the
best corporate event
catering in Denver. Occasion guides that pair well with a Lunch Wired order
include lunch and learn catering,
offsite and team retreat catering,
the corporate event catering
checklist,
party tray catering,
holiday party planning and
summer office catering ideas.
Industry-specific guides cover
law firms,
manufacturing and
nonprofits.
Cost and format planning lives in the
boxed lunch cost guide, the
meeting boxed lunch guide,
the boxed breakfast
guide, the
office
breakfast ideas guide, the
boxed lunch company
roundup and our
buffet
or boxed lunch explainer. Other partner spotlights worth a look:
Bite NYC,
Curry Up Now,
Vitality Bowls,
Mochinut,
Joe’s Pizza and
Taco del Mar.
For a standing meal program across offices, see
corporate catering. For one-off
events with staffing and decor, see
corporate event catering. If
you are new to Zerocater, how it works covers the
basics, and CaterAi builds a menu from your headcount,
budget and dietary mix in a single chat.
Menus, formats,
delivery windows and pricing change. For the current Lunch Wired menu and a live
quote for your office, check the
Lunch Wired page on Zerocater.
Plan your Denver office catering with CaterAi
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lunch Wired?
Lunch Wired is a corporate catering company based in Centennial, Colorado,
serving offices across the South Denver Metro. Jordan Drori opened it in August
2011 with a short menu built for individual lunch delivery and pickup. The
kitchen sat near the Denver Tech Center, corporate clients started ordering at
volume, and Drori rebuilt the business around them. It runs no dining room, so
the kitchen produces catering orders and nothing else.
Is Lunch Wired good for office catering?
Office catering is the whole business here. The menu was designed for food that travels
and gets set up somewhere else rather than adapted from a dine-in lineup, the
drivers work in house instead of through a courier app, and setup is included at
no extra charge. The ordering side carries the parts a company needs: a
concierge team for custom menus, a corporate account option, invoicing with PO
numbers and a named billing contact, and standing employee meal programs. The
main constraint is geographic, since the delivery radius covers the South Denver
Metro rather than the whole Front Range.
What kind of food does Lunch Wired cater?
Catering is ordered as a build-your-own matrix rather than a fixed list. You
pick proteins such as chicken breast or thigh, pulled chicken, pulled pork, pork
loin, skirt steak, barbacoa, shrimp, meatballs, Italian sausage or chicken
parmesan, then a sauce or marinade: barbecue, fajita rub, teriyaki, Korean
barbecue, Vietnamese, sweet chili, marinara, alfredo, creamy pesto, romesco or a
cheddar and gouda sauce. Bases include linguini, penne, cavatappi and rices,
plus salads, roasted vegetable sides, house-made potato chips and brownies.
Breakfast, boxed lunches and grab-n-go items run on separate menus.
Does Lunch Wired have vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options?
Yes, and the vegetarian coverage runs parallel to the meat line rather than
sitting off to the side. Tofu, zucchini planks and a black bean patty carry
nearly every sauce and marinade the meat proteins do, so a vegetarian pan reads
as the same dish rather than a substitute. Falafel, edamame, roasted vegetables
and composed salads extend it. On the gluten side, the base list carries a
gluten-free penne and a gluten-free bun alongside the standard pastas and
brioche. For a severe allergy, confirm the specific item and its preparation
with the kitchen before ordering, since a shared kitchen cannot guarantee the
absence of cross-contact.
Where does Lunch Wired deliver?
Lunch Wired delivers across the South Denver Metro, out to a maximum of
roughly 20 miles driving distance from the Centennial kitchen. That covers
Arapahoe, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties, including Centennial,
Greenwood Village, the Denver Tech Center, Englewood, Littleton, Lone Tree,
Parker, Aurora, Lakewood, Castle Rock and Castle Pines. Offices past the edge of
that radius should call before planning an order rather than assume coverage.
Pickup at the Centennial kitchen is available on any order.
How much lead time does Lunch Wired need?
Plan on at least 24 hours for a standard catering order, and give the team
more room on a large one. Catering pickup and delivery run weekdays from early
morning through the end of the business day, with weekend catering arranged by
phone rather than booked online. Breakfast deliveries can start as early as 6:00
to 6:15 a.m., which covers a pre-market meeting or an early all-hands.
Last-minute orders sometimes work, so ask rather than assume.
Does Lunch Wired set up the food when it delivers?
Yes, and setup is included at no extra charge. The delivery team arranges the
food and the serving utensils before leaving rather than handing over bags at
reception. Standard delivery slots run in 30-minute windows, with tighter
15-minute windows on early-morning breakfast orders. The team also delivers into
buildings with security check-ins and loading docks, so share the dock location,
the security desk procedure and your suite number when you order.
Can Lunch Wired handle a large event or a full buffet?
Yes. Beyond drop-off trays, Lunch Wired runs full buffet service with setup
and cleanup, and rents equipment including grills, carving stations and beverage
stations. Bartender support is available, though Lunch Wired does not supply the
alcohol itself, so you source that separately. The kitchen also builds seasonal
and custom menus around a theme, a headcount and a format, which suits a holiday
party or a company milestone better than ordering off the standard list.
to plan your catering
