Forum Discussion
MGCI Training - July Topic: Food! Meals, snacks, and beverages
It depends on the venue. If the venue does not require us to use their catering service, we will source bagels, coffee and pastries for breakfast. For lunch we would do either pizza cut in party style or sandwiches. Our options range from Costco, Starbucks, Jimmy Johns, Publix and other local businesses. As we are a community focused non profit, we prefer to source local to support the small businesses in our area. We also placeo out small Halloween size treats throughout the day for speakers, sponsors and attendees to grab as they move between sessions.
Great points:
Venue requirements - Many venues require you use their food service. This limits your options and is often relatively pricey. Check with your venue before locking in. Work with venue contacts to find out if there are exceptions to policies like this for snacks, coffee, etc. - any where you can trim costs if needed.
On the non-profit topic, some vendors will offer free options or reduced price offerings for non-profits. Make sure to ask.
We love the "support local" options when we can. One issue we ran into was the pizza shop couldn't keep up with the number of pizzas we needed. We had to split the order across a couple of local businesses.
Snacks throughout the day are great. One option that can increase sponsor engagement is placing snacks on sponsor tables (If they're ok with that). Keep servings "grabbable" size to keep it simple.
