Safely Ordering Food Back in the Office

With companies starting to bring employees back to the office, safety is a top priority. We’re sure many are anxious about going back in. While you and your team have spent months apart and distancing is the new normal, office meals have always, and will continue to, encourage employee connection and team building. We want to help continue fostering these connections and at the same time create a safe workplace to make meals stress-free for your group. Hopefully we can put your mind at ease by sharing how our industry and our restaurants are adapting to these unprecedented times.

Individual Packaging

For the past half year, all of us at CaterCow have been working with vetted restaurant partners to provide individually packaged meals. By now, it’s accepted that individually-wrapped is the preferred way to minimize any risks during this pandemic, but we didn’t want to just add any random menu on our website — since this is new to our restaurant partners as well, we wanted to make sure they had the right packaging for delivery and prepared food that traveled well.

Restaurant Safety Guidelines

When it comes to ordering food, you want to know that the meal is being prepared under strict health and safety guidelines. While the CDC says that the risk of contracting COVID-19 from food or its packaging is very low and that there have been no confirmed cases via food preparation, our goal is to go beyond that and partner with restaurants who are hyper focused on their customers and employees’ health and safety. For example, in New York City, our restaurant partner Avocaderia sanitizes the restaurant from top to bottom prior to opening and again at closing each day. They always wear masks and gloves throughout their shifts and conduct temperature and symptom checks before work, during their shifts, as well as before leaving each day. Customers who enter the premises must also go through a temperature check.

Building Safety

The more people we come in contact with, the greater risk we have of contracting the virus, and there’s no place in our day-to-day lives where this problem is more acute than our office buildings. Property managers are trying to reduce congestion in their lobbies and elevators while minimizing the number of deliveries they receive to prioritize safety. On top of that, they are spacing out common room desks and are increasing the frequency of cleaning high touch points (think door handles, elevator buttons, and table surfaces). Mandatory face covering rules are in effect for their community teams, vendors, and also tenants and guests in public areas, especially locations where distance cannot be maintained.

How CaterCow Can Help

With safety as all of our top priorities, how can companies and their employees still enjoy office meals? By ordering individually-packaged meals delivered to your office, not only can we provide your team with a perk, but we can make going back into the office a safer experience:

• You’ll have one point of contact and receive one delivery, keeping external traffic down from one-off delivery staff across various restaurants (and you’ll also make building management happy)
• You’ll reduce the amount of in-and-out-of-the-building your team would’ve typically done during the busy lunch rush period. You’ll still be able to foster team building and connection, as everyone can enjoy their meals together while maintaining social distance

We recognize that each company and its employees will have differing levels of comfortability getting back into an office routine. CaterCow is here for you as a resource to help minimize stress when it comes time to safely ordering food for your team.

Stay safe! Happy, healthy grazing!