Do not under estimate how important catering is on retreat. Views on retreat success can be decided on the quality and volume of food alone. People like to know when and what they are eating at all times.

Preparation

Start the conversation around food in the first stage of your enquiry. Your contact at the property will likely have a list of caterers they’ve worked with and can recommend. They should understand how important this element is to the success of your stay.

Start making noises about costs early. Lots of these properties are wedding venues outside of retreat locations, and therefore have a slightly more skewed view on prices and often assume that you’ll have a corporate budget for spend like this.

Everything from amount of food, timings, and dietary requirements come into play and can make life really hard if things aren’t going well. Compiling a document of what you want which you can use time and time again is worth its weight in gold. Be clear - but give chefs free reign - you want your team to experience local dishes - but they need to fit with their palate. The document can evolve with your experiences of what goes down well, and not well with your people.

The service

Alongside the food, you want a team who are going to provide the ingredients, clear dishes and wash up. Make sure that this is part of the services they are offering.

The food

Agree the menu with your chef well in advance. It’s not something you’re going to want to be debating on retreat, or even on the lead up when you’re focus can be somewhere else. Getting the menu sorted early is an easy win.

Be incredibly clear on your teams dietary requirements. Tell your caterers how many people eat meat, how many are vegan and vegetarians. Informing the chef of dietary requirements early on is also very important.

Maybe provide an example report, or menu here.

The beverages

Having favourite drinks available as self-serve on tap during the day is really important. Soft drinks, fresh cold drinking water and especially tea and coffee can keep people going. Remember there are all different kinds of milk nowadays that you might need to hunt around for in particular countries.

Next decision is around your bar. Is there a bar at your property? Do the caterers provide bar services? Is your bar free, or do you want to restrict what’s available so things don’t get silly costs wise?

Or will you provide your own bar? Will someone run your bar, or will it be self-serve? Stocking your own bar is certainly the least expensive - but how do you avoid waste, who will tidy up, and do you have the means to restock. How you recycling empties is also an important part of running your own bar.

Extras

Caterers won’t usually provide the things you know your team love, or chatted about in Slack.

Providing them can give another level of care, thought and even banter can make a retreat even more special. Bringing foods with you, creating accounts with local online supermarkets, and having the ability to get to local supermarkets for emergencies is really important. Especially in more rural areas where the team won’t have the opportunity to pop to a local shop without a lot of effort.

Basic things like having unlimited snacks and a fruit bowl can stop grumbles about being hungry at points of time where they’d usually be eating in their normal lives.

For extra food points check to see if anyone one the team will be celebrating a birthday, or special occasion. Buying a cake, or asking your caterers to bake a cake is a massive win and a nice way to get everyone celebrating together.