Most corporate catering fails on logistics rather than food. It arrives late, it arrives cold, or it seats a room you were trying to get talking. We are a marquee caterer, which means arriving on time at somewhere with no kitchen is the ordinary version of our job.

Receptions and networking

Bowl food is the right answer more often than a buffet. Three bowls a head replaces a light meal, five replaces dinner, and served one variety at a time by front of house who keep clearing, the room stays standing and stays talking.

Newmarket Musk sausages with creamy mash and red onion gravy is not a canapé and not a buffet, and it is what people remember.

Working lunches and meetings

Delivered, set up, cleared. For a private lunch in your own boardroom see directors’ lunches.

Summer and Christmas parties

In a marquee on your own site, at a venue, or exclusively at The Outlook at Fox’s Marina.

Why us rather than a contract caterer

• One contact and one invoice, not an account manager and a franchise
• The same chefs who cook our weddings
• 5-star food hygiene rating
• We arrive with our own power and water, so a warehouse, a yard, a barn or a field is not a problem

Where we work

Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire, from Mickfield near Stowmarket.

We also cater on location for productions working in the region — breakfast from crew call, hot lunch inside the meal break, our own kitchen where there is nothing. See film, TV and crew catering.

Menus

Corporate food fails in predictable ways: it arrives cold, it arrives late, or there is nothing for the two people who said something in advance. These are the starting points:

• Bowl food menus — for a reception or a launch where people are standing and holding a drink
• Sharing and feasting menus — for a seated company dinner that is meant to feel like an occasion
• Directors’ lunches — a small number, properly cooked, on your own premises
• Buffets — for a working lunch or a training day, staffed rather than left out
• Afternoon tea — for a client afternoon or a long meeting

We invoice the company against a purchase order and we will work to your finance process rather than asking you to work around ours.

What corporate catering usually gets wrong

It arrives cold, it arrives late, or there is nothing for the two people who told somebody in advance. All three are avoidable and all three are about planning rather than cooking.

The underlying problem is that most corporate catering is delivered rather than cooked. Food made three hours earlier and driven across a county is a logistics exercise, not a meal. We cook on site wherever the building allows it, and where it genuinely does not, we build the menu around what travels rather than pretending the journey does not exist.

The clock belongs to your meeting, not our kitchen

Sessions overrun. If lunch is built to be served at one o’clock and only at one o’clock, it fails the moment the morning runs twenty minutes over — and somebody is then standing at the back of the room waving at the chair.

We build food that holds, and we take the timing from whoever is running the day. Tell us the agenda rather than a serving time. If the schedule slips, the food slips with it, quietly.

Formats, and which to pick

Working lunch, people stay seated: something that can be eaten while a laptop is open. Nothing that needs concentration.

Networking or a launch: bowl food is the only format that properly feeds a standing room, and canapés handle the first hour.

Company dinner or awards evening: sharing and feasting if you want the room talking, plated if there are speeches and a running order.

Board or client lunch, small numbers: directors’ lunches.

Christmas: Christmas and New Year party catering, and book it in September rather than November.

Working with your building, and your finance department

We work in offices, warehouses, showrooms and meeting rooms that have never held more than a kettle. There is no minimum kitchen requirement; we bring what is missing. What helps is knowing about lifts, loading, security passes and the time we can get in.

We invoice the company against a purchase order and work to your finance process rather than asking anyone to settle up on the day. If you need us on a supplier list, insurance certificates, risk assessments and hygiene documentation come without being chased.

If your own premises are not suitable, The Outlook at Fox’s Marina can be taken over exclusively for a client evening or an away-day.