Easter Catering

Easter Sunday belongs to families, and no office wants a version of it. Nothing needs rescheduling either: the building was closed that day and opens as normal on Monday.

So the order in front of you is not an Easter party. It is the week’s spring lunch with a seasonal menu on it. Good Friday closes the stock markets and is a day off at some companies, though most work it, so check your calendar first.

Keep it secular by default. Not everyone marks the day, and a spring lunch nobody has to decode includes the whole floor. Holiday catering across the year maps what sits either side.

Ham is the anchor tray, and nothing competes with it at Easter, so the only live question is how much. Plan half to three quarters of a pound of bone-in ham per adult, or a third to half a pound boneless. Our post on cooking Easter dinner at home holds the detail behind both. Lamb suits a room that eats adventurously, as a herb-crusted rack carved into chops.

Let the season carry the rest:

• Asparagus and peas, roasted hot or dressed cold. Both read as spring on sight.
• Roasted carrots and radishes, with scalloped potatoes if the lunch needs weight.
• Deviled eggs, the one egg tradition an office can put out without explaining it.

Brunch is a different build, and it belongs to catering a brunch party.

More than a month of swing sits between the earliest Easter and the latest, and it decides who turns up.

School spring breaks fall across the same stretch. An early Easter and a late one land on opposite sides of them, so the parents in your office follow the school calendar, not the holiday. One year the floor is full, the next it is thin.

So count twice. Check where the break weeks fall around each office and order to that number, not the badge count. A spread bought for a floor that is a third empty is how this lunch goes wrong.

A themed spring lunch prices like any other themed lunch, $12 to $20 per head. Build it into a proper ham spread with three or four sides and it becomes a feast order at $18 to $35.

Dessert is where a small spend buys the most recognition. Carrot cake is the Easter dessert the way pumpkin pie belongs to autumn, and one sheet signals more than decor ever will. Keep what follows pale and light: lemon bars, coconut cupcakes, a berry trifle. Our Easter lunch ideas cover the sweet end.

Mother’s Day catering comes next on this axis, and it asks for far less food. Give CaterAi a week and a count and it prices the spring lunch against the ham spread.