There’s no question that free or subsidized food is a top perk for employees, but sometimes, providing that food can be a time-consuming challenge, from knowing where to find the most reliable caterers, to finding food that everyone will like.

Just ask anyone who has ordered catering for a group: You ask 10 people what they want to eat and you get 10 different answers. Then you settle on a restaurant but have to find meals that both meat eaters and vegetarians will like. And, finally, you need to ensure everyone’s food allergies are accounted for. It’s a lot. And it gets even more overwhelming when you have other responsibilities to juggle.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to feed the workplace. ezCater has a host of features that simplify the food-ordering process. They help you save precious time, effort, and resources — all while rewarding your teams with the productivity-boosting meals they deserve.

Ready to do catering differently? Here are five features you can leverage to become a food-ordering pro.

1. Filters

The days of spending hours staring at a screen searching for the ideal caterer are gone. Now, ezCater’s filters let you quickly narrow down your options.

Say you want to grab tacos from a latine-owned Mexican restaurant and include your vegan colleagues. Where should you source your feast? The quickest way to find that out is to use ezCater’s Cuisine, Dietary, and Diversity of Ownership filters. Combining the three will show you a list of caterers that fit the bill.

Of course, those are not the only filters you can use to source different meals. For instance, the Reliability Rockstar filter will be your best friend when ordering catering for a high-stakes sales meeting. It shows you a selection of restaurants that consistently receive high customer reviews and go above and beyond our already high expectations for caterers. That’s just what you need to make a lasting positive impression at a meeting.

2. Group ordering

Filters solve one problem: choosing a restaurant. But what about actually picking meals your employees will like? Food preferences are so subjective that you’re left guessing which dishes will be a hit, which ones to avoid, and how much food to get. Do you feel the pressure?

ezCater’s Group Ordering feature takes that burden off your shoulders. Instead of micromanaging meals, you can shift the decision-making to employees. Here’s how it works: you pick a restaurant, set a per-person budget limit as an optional step, and send attendees a link to the catering menu. Then, each individual picks what they want to eat. You’ll have a chance to review the whole order before submitting to the restaurant.

You’ll still be in control, but now you don’t have to worry about making the right menu decisions.

3. Order editing

Mistakes happen and plans change. We get it. Maybe you forgot to order enough gluten-free sandwiches for a team-building session, or a marketing meeting got pushed back after you had already ordered a tray full of pastries. With ezCater, editing orders is simple.

For example, you could quickly add those gluten-free sandwiches to the team order so no one goes hungry. Last-minute changes are trickier but not impossible. Just be sure to submit edits before the restaurant’s cut-off period, which is usually 24 hours before your delivery date. 

Having this flexibility with your catering helps you manage resources better. Canceled marketing meeting? Go ahead and cancel your catering order, too. Those pastries you ordered won’t go to waste or cost you money. 

4. Manage multiple orders at a time

Everything gets more complicated when you place orders for multiple departments at the same time — each with different meeting and event locations. Unless you keep very detailed notes, chances are you’ll have a hard time telling orders apart.

That’s not an issue with ezCater because you can add nicknames to each order. For instance, you can label one as “Monday marketing lunch” and another as “Monday IT meeting.” Then, when you go into the Orders tab on your ezCater dashboard, you can tell which order is which at a glance. That’s so much easier than having to write down or memorize an order number.

Let’s look at it in practice. Say it’s Friday afternoon and you’re eager to head home, but you need to check whether you’ve planned all your departments’ meals for the following week. You open the Orders tab, select Calendar View, and take a peek. Scanning the page will tell you that, yes, you ordered food for the Monday marketing department lunch — but you forgot to order the Monday IT meeting.

Finding that information took you less than one minute because you labeled your scheduled orders. Now, you can fix this missing meals problem quickly, go home, and rest knowing everything is running smoothly.

5. Expense reporting to SAP Concur

With traditional catering, the stress of ordering doesn’t end when the food is delivered: you still need to keep track of receipts. That’s not the case for Concur Expense users.

The ezCater + Concur Expense integration does the tedious admin work for you. If you’re a Concur Expense user, you can ditch food-stained paper receipts. Simply connect both accounts and ezCater will automatically send all receipts to SAP Concur. That’s it.

Managing catering expenses can be hands-off and painless. With this feature, you can say goodbye to rifling through piles of faded invoices and dealing with the headache of missing receipts at the end of the month.

Start ordering food for work like a pro

You don’t have to be superhuman to thrive as an office hero. These five features do most of the food-ordering heavy lifting so you can enhance employee experience without burning out. Ready to try them yourself? Start an order today and embrace a more rewarding and efficient catering experience.