A couple of years ago, whilst pitching our catering services to a hugely successful UK cosmetics company, who describe themselves as being purveyors of “vegetarian, vegan and cruelty-free cosmetics”, I had the pleasure of enjoying a delicious 8-course vegan tasting menu with our prospective client. The tasting menu was the brainchild of our executive chef and we’d spent several weeks perfecting the dishes, ahead of the big tasting for the client’s ethical director and the company’s events team.
During the vegan feast, we enjoyed at the tasting, our client, herself a lifelong passionate promoter or veganism, regaled us with a story that has stuck in my mind ever since. The short version of the story goes something like this – said, vegetarian & vegan company had gathered a large group of their managers in a hotel, run by a well known international hotel chain, for a leadership conference. All was going fine until lunchtime when the delegate broke from the morning’s conference to be greeted by a beautiful buffet lunch, complete with large signs, directing people to different parts of the buffet, depending on their dietary preferences (or needs).
This sounds great and the signage sounds like a nice touch, huh? Except for the fact, the vegetarian and vegan buffet station was adorned with a giant sign reading “Special Diets”! Given that the vast majority of the delegates were vegetarian or vegan, I’ll leave you to imagine the ensuing furore.
As there is no longer a requirement to wear sandals (faux leather, of course), have dreadlocks and practice yoga three times a day, in order to enjoy a vegan diet and with vegetarian and flexitarian diets gaining more and more popularity, the days of treating these and the plethora of other diets as special are long gone.
Whatever diet you choose from vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, Kosher, Halal, Paleo, the new Atkins or the Rosemary Colney diet, let’s face it, we all make choices about what we do and don’t want to eat, so just like my mum told me growing up, I guess we’re all special!
Whilst we’re talking about how special (and different) we all are, it’s worth mentioning the rigorous way that we check and inform our customers of allergens in the food we serve. Now, these really are special requirements. Not special in the sense of singling people out with large signs and special lunch queues, but special in that we take special care to ensure we provide our customers with all of the information they require, in order to avoid eating anything they’re allergic to.
Whether you’ve got an office full of carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, flexitarians or a complete mixture of the above, our team of chefs are cooking up some pretty special food that we’d love to share with you.
Got a crowd in the office to feed? Give us a call on 0207 283 2412 to discuss your options, visit our menus page to get an idea of some of the mouth-watering food available, or place an order now!
