New Office Opening Catering

A new address has no delivery history, so every detail a driver normally gets told is a guess.

Settle these before you order anything:

• Which door takes a hand truck, and where the van waits.
• Dock hours, if there is a dock. Many shut before evening.
• The freight elevator, usually reserved through building management.
• Who lets a stranger past the lobby, and what changes after 6pm.
• The surface the food lands on if the kitchen is unfinished.

The move resets your delivery radius too. Kitchens draw tight zones, so caterers the old office relied on may not reach this one, and the blocks around the new address are your shortlist now. Document it once, from the five inputs behind any catering order.

The best move for an office opening costs one ordinary team lunch.

Send a small delivery to the new address a week ahead. Every unknown above answers itself on a quiet Tuesday: the driver who circles the block, the dock that closed at four, the desk that turns a stranger away.

Then give that kitchen the bigger job. A caterer who has already found the building beats a better menu from one who has not. The wider sequence is mapped by the six week planning timeline for event catering.

Move-in day feeds your own people, and the room is boxes. Nothing is set up, the serviceware is taped inside a crate, and half the team is carrying a monitor.

So the order follows one rule: nothing that needs a plate, a seat, or a fork. Sandwiches, wraps, tacos, pizza, burritos, skewers. Napkins by the stack, and use the caterer’s disposables rather than digging out yours.

Name the surface the spread goes on before it arrives, since a counter may not exist yet. Have the coffee turn up already made, because nothing is plumbed in for another week.

The open house happens weeks later, and it is a separate event. Clients, partners, the broker and the landlord come to see a finished space.

Build it as a reception. Standing food, drinks, no seated meal. Drop-off platters carry a short one at $12 to $20 per person, and a grazing table that runs into the evening lands at $18 to $30. Keep the food away from whatever you want guests to walk toward, so the floor gets used.

Guest-facing spend follows its own logic, worked through on our client appreciation catering page. CaterAi takes the new address and a headcount and returns kitchens that will genuinely drive there, which is the search this move forced you to redo. The other occasions worth feeding are indexed at catering for every office occasion.