Sugar-Free Catering

Two different people send this request. One is managing diabetes and counting for themselves, so what they need is an accurate picture of the spread. The other is cutting added sugar and wants unsweetened choices.

Neither is asking you to plan their eating, and neither wants dessert cancelled. Dessert is the honest item on a spread: everybody sees a brownie and decides. The sugar that catches people sits in the sauces and on the drinks table, where nothing is labeled.

Savory dishes carry most of it, and the list is short.

• Glazes and marinades on the protein. Teriyaki, bbq, honey garlic, sweet chili, balsamic.
• Dressings and dips. Honey mustard, sesame ginger, coleslaw, most creamy dressings.
• Salad toppings. Candied nuts, dried cranberries, the crunchy noodle in a slaw.

Those take two asks. A dressing travels in a cup and leaves the dish intact. A glaze goes on during cooking and never comes off, so ask for a plain portion of the protein with the glaze beside it.

Then ask the kitchen a question it can answer. Which of these are sweetened, and with what, gets a reply dish by dish. Asking whether a dish is sugar-free only gets a shrug. Barbecue proves the point: Kansas City sauce is built on ketchup and molasses while the Carolina vinegar and mustard styles are not, as our tour of regional barbecue sauce styles shows.

The food gets thought about. The drinks get grabbed. A case of soda and a flat of bottled juice can carry more added sugar than the entire hot line, and nobody specified any of it.

So buy the drinks deliberately. Sparkling water, unsweetened iced tea, and a coffee setup for the afternoon cover most of this request with no special meal for anyone.

Then watch the middle of that table. Lemonade, agua fresca, sweet tea, and bottled iced coffee all read as the alternative to soda, and nearly every one is sweetened. Healthy office catering flags that line as its own trap.

Sugar-free is not dessert-free, and the reflex fix makes it worse. A tray of sugar-free brownies lands as a consolation prize and goes home untouched.

Close instead with a course that was never built on sugar: a board of fruit with cheese, olives, and nuts, or dark chocolate. Who it is for is the difference. A bowl of melon beside the brownie tray for one colleague is an apology. The same board, ordered as dessert for the room, is a course.

Bread, rice, and pasta are a separate question that light-carb catering takes. Put the request in the notes with your headcount in CaterAi and the dressings and glazes come back on the side. Rooms with more than one restriction start from the dietary catering pages.