Training Day Catering - Choosing the Menu for Your Group

A training-day menu has a different job from a party menu. The goal is not to fill people up, but to keep their energy and focus until the end of the day. Below we show how to build the food around the training schedule and what is better avoided.

A menu that follows the schedule

First write down the times: start, breaks and finish. Then match the food to them:

• welcome (before the start) - coffee, tea, water and something small for people who skipped breakfast,
• mid-morning break - fruit, yoghurts, small sandwiches,
• lunch - one hot dish, a salad, water and juice,
• afternoon break - something sweet and coffee, because that is when energy drops most.

For a morning-only session the welcome and one break are enough. For a full day all four are useful.

A lunch nobody falls asleep after

The most common mistake is a heavy lunch: fatty meat, lots of potatoes, a thick sauce. After a meal like that the first hour of the afternoon session is lost. Lighter dishes work better: fish or chicken with vegetables, pasta with a light sauce, grains with roasted vegetables, a cream soup and a salad.

Buffet or served meal

Training days usually go for a buffet. It is faster, everyone takes as much as they want, and participants talk while they eat, which often adds more than another slide. A served meal suits a board meeting or a meeting with clients better.

Diets

Collect dietary needs in the registration form. The most common are vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and lactose-free. Ask for these portions to be labelled and kept separately, so they do not disappear in the first minutes of the break.

Drinks all day

Water should stay in the room for the whole session, not only during breaks. Coffee and tea ideally from the welcome to the end of the day. Count about two cups per person per break.

How much food to order

Order for the number of confirmed participants plus trainers and organisers, who are easy to forget. Add a small margin, because people eat more in the afternoon than in the morning. A few leftover sandwiches are better than the last people in the queue facing empty plates.

A sample full-day training menu

• 9:00 - coffee, tea, water, small pastries,
• 11:00 - fruit, sandwiches on small rolls,
• 13:00 - cream soup, chicken with vegetables or a vegan dish, salad,
• 15:00 - cake, coffee, tea.

Training catering at BRDA 144

At BRDA 144 on ul. Krzysztofa Gotowskiego 6 in Bydgoszcz we prepare coffee breaks and lunch through our own catering, at an extra cost, around your schedule. The training room is 144 sqm with air conditioning, a sound system and WiFi, and in summer breaks can move out to the 100 sqm terrace. There is parking next to the building.

Questions about a training-day menu

How many meals for a full-day training?

Usually a welcome coffee, two breaks and lunch. For a shorter session a welcome and one break are enough.

What to serve in the afternoon break?

Something sweet and coffee. It is the moment of the biggest energy dip, so a small dessert works better than more sandwiches.

How do you collect dietary needs?

The simplest way is in the training registration form, with one question listing the most common diets and a field for allergies.