An office manager orders platters for a client meeting. She sends a message at half past eight in the evening because that is when she remembered.
Nobody replies until half past ten the next morning. By then she has ordered from a chain that let her complete the whole thing on a website in four minutes, and she will never ask again.
1. Treat these as a different product
Office catering is not a larger counter order. It has delivery, timing, invoicing and presentation requirements that a walk in customer never has.
2. Publish a platter menu with prices
Per platter, with what is on it and how many it serves. Office managers need to compare and forward something, not have a conversation.
3. State the serves figure honestly
How many people a platter actually feeds as part of a working lunch. Under ordering is the commonest complaint and it starts with an optimistic number.
4. Publish a cut off time, not a notice period
By four o'clock for next day is understood immediately. Twenty four hours notice invites an argument about when the clock started.
5. Capture the address in full, including the floor
Business parks, serviced offices and buildings with reception desks. A delivery driver standing in a lobby with no contact is the failure mode here.
6. Get a contact who will be there
Not the person ordering, who may be in a meeting. Somebody who can receive the delivery at the time it arrives.
7. Collect dietary requirements as a structured list
Counts per requirement rather than a sentence. Gluten free, vegan, no nuts, with numbers, because a note at the end of a message gets missed.
8. Ask what the occasion is
A client meeting needs different presentation from a team lunch. Asking signals that you have done this before and frequently increases the order.
9. Be clear about delivery charges and radius
Free within a distance, charged beyond it, or collection only. Office managers budget precisely and need this before they commit.
10. Say what happens with plates and equipment
Disposable, returnable platters, whether you collect and when. This is the detail that makes an office order feel organised or chaotic.
11. Offer an invoicing arrangement
Purchase orders, monthly invoicing and payment terms. Many offices cannot pay by card at the door, and this alone wins accounts.
12. Build a standing profile for repeat clients
Address, contact, usual order, dietary requirements and invoicing details held once, so reordering takes a minute rather than ten.
13. Handle the celebration orders alongside
Birthdays and leaving parties come through the same route, which is the detail discipline in custom cake orders that need every detail.
14. Learn from the caterers doing this at scale
The same repeat ordering problem is examined in corporate catering enquiries small bakeries receive.
15. Answer at the hour the order is placed
Which is the evening, when an office manager is clearing her list. An assistant that takes the numbers, date, time, address, floor, dietary counts and invoicing details captures the order that would otherwise go to a chain. That is exactly the pattern in corporate lunch orders that arrive after the office closes, and the same booking logic appears in ai receptionist opticians.
16. What a proper process produces
A standing account instead of a single order. See pricing, run the numbers on the chatbot ROI calculator, and the sector view sits under restaurants.