Corporate and Office Catering in Ireland: The Complete Guide

Corporate catering in Ireland usually runs about €25 to €150 per head depending on the format, from a working lunch to a sit-down client dinner. On CaterKin you browse a caterer, request a booking and enter your card. At that point only a hold is placed. You are charged when the host accepts, and the hold is released if they decline or do not respond.

You know the drill. It's Tuesday, someone mentions the all-hands is on Thursday, and suddenly the food is your problem. Forty people, three of them vegan, one coeliac, and the budget is whatever doesn't get questioned in the expenses review. The good news is that catering a work event is mostly about getting four or five decisions right early, then leaving the cooking to someone who does it for a living.

This guide walks through the common formats, what a sensible per-head budget looks like, how to handle dietary requirements without a spreadsheet meltdown, and how far ahead you actually need to book. CaterKin's caterer inventory is strongest in Dublin and growing in other cities, so it's most useful if your office is in or near a place with a decent pool of hosts.

What kind of corporate catering do you actually need?

Before you look at a single menu, work out the format. The format drives the budget, the lead time and the kind of host you want. Most work catering falls into a handful of shapes, and naming yours early saves a lot of back and forth.

• Working lunches. The everyday one. Sandwiches, wraps, salad bowls, maybe hot trays for a longer meeting. Delivered, set up, and out of your way. This is the bread and butter of office catering in Dublin and the format you'll book most often.
• Away-days and team off-sites. A full day off campus needs more thought: arrival pastries and coffee, a proper lunch, an afternoon pick-me-up. Food keeps the energy up when the agenda drags into the afternoon.
• Client and board dinners. Higher stakes, smaller numbers, bigger spend per head. Here a private chef cooking on site can land better than drop-off catering, because the meal is part of the impression you're making.
• Celebrations and milestones. Launches, end-of-quarter, someone's last day. Grazing tables and canapes suit a standing crowd far better than a plated meal nobody can balance on their lap.
• Cooking classes and food experiences as team activities. If the brief is bonding rather than feeding, a hands-on class or a food experience can do more for the team than another lunch. These are priced per person rather than by package.

Two formats, two ways to book. For a straightforward drop-off lunch you can request a caterer's listing directly. For anything bespoke (a client dinner with a specific menu, a tricky room, an odd timing) message the host first and agree a custom quote in the chat, then pay against that. The custom-quote route is the better call whenever your event doesn't fit neatly into a standard package.

How much should you budget per head?

Hosts set their own prices on CaterKin, so treat any figure as a starting point rather than a fixed rate. That said, here are the typical Irish per-person ranges to anchor your planning. Catering packages are built from menu items rather than a flat per-person ticket, so the final number depends on what you choose and how many you are feeding.

A few things move the number. Hot food costs more than cold, on-site cooking costs more than drop-off, and dietary-specific dishes made separately can add a little. Some caterers and chefs set a minimum order, which you'll see on their profile, so a small team booking a high-end chef may need to clear a floor before the booking makes sense. There is no platform-wide minimum. It's set per host.

One honest tip on budgeting: don't shave it so thin that you're under-ordering. Running out of food at a work event is the kind of thing people remember. It's usually safer to cater for your full headcount and accept a little left over than to gamble on half the room skipping lunch.

How do you cover dietary needs without a headache?

This is the part that quietly sinks office catering. You collect requirements late, or not at all, and end up with a vegan colleague eating a side salad while everyone else has the hot trays. A bit of structure up front fixes nearly all of it.

1. Ask for requirements when you send the calendar invite, not the day before. Give people a deadline and a simple format: vegetarian, vegan, coeliac or gluten-free, dairy-free, nut allergy, halal, and anything else.
2. Separate a genuine allergy from a preference in your own head. A nut or gluten allergy is a safety matter the kitchen has to handle carefully. A preference is easier to flex. Caterers want to know which is which.
3. Send the full list to the host through CaterKin's in-app messaging before you confirm. Ask plainly how they handle cross-contamination for the serious allergies. A good caterer will have a clear answer.
4. Order a few more plant-based and gluten-free portions than your declared count. People under-report, and an extra tray of something everyone can eat is cheap insurance.
5. Label everything on the day, or ask the host to. A small card on each platter saves a dozen 'is there dairy in this?' questions and protects the person who really can't have it.

All of this happens in the chat thread with the host. You message back and forth, agree the detail, and only a first name and photo are shared between you. Email and phone numbers are never exchanged. The event address is shared with the host, because they need it to deliver the food.

How far ahead do you need to book?

Lead time is the thing people get wrong most often. A good caterer's Saturday is somebody's wedding and somebody else's fortieth, so the busy hosts fill up. Here's a sensible rule of thumb, bearing in mind every host runs their own diary.

• Standard working lunch: a few days is often enough, but a week is comfortable. Same-day is a long shot.
• Away-day or larger group (30-plus): aim for two to three weeks. You want choice, not whoever happens to be free.
• Client or board dinner with a private chef: three to four weeks. A custom menu needs a conversation, and the best chefs book out early.
• Anything in December: book as early as you possibly can. The Christmas-party window in Ireland is brutal for availability, and good hosts are gone by mid-November.

Remember how the booking lands. When you request, a hold goes on your card and nothing is charged yet. You're charged only when the host accepts. If they decline or simply don't respond, the hold is released and you're never out of pocket. So requesting early costs you nothing while you wait to hear back, and it gets you to the front of the queue.

What happens if the plan changes?

Work events move. A key client reschedules, the headcount drops, the whole thing gets pushed a fortnight. CaterKin's cancellation refunds are tiered on the service price, and the processing fee is not refundable. The closer to the event you cancel, the less comes back.

If a host cancels a confirmed booking on you, that's different: you get 100% back, including the fees. The practical takeaway for a work booking is to lock your headcount and date before you confirm where you can, and if a date genuinely might slip, say so to the host in the chat early. Most are reasonable when you give them notice.

Who's actually cooking? A note on trust

Spending company money on a stranger's food is a fair thing to be cautious about. Every host on CaterKin is reviewed and approved by the team before they go live, and each one completes Stripe's identity checks before they can get paid. Payments run through Stripe, so card details never touch CaterKin. You talk to the host through in-app messaging the whole way, which means you can ask the awkward questions about allergens, timing and setup before you commit a cent.

For a recurring need, like a monthly team lunch, it's worth finding one or two caterers you click with and rebooking them. A host who already knows your office, your dietary regulars and where the kitchen is becomes much easier the second and third time.

A quick pre-booking checklist

• Format named: lunch, away-day, dinner, celebration or team activity.
• Headcount and date locked, with a little buffer on numbers.
• Per-head budget set, checked against the host's minimum order if they have one.
• Dietary requirements collected and sent to the host in the chat.
• Lead time respected, especially for dinners and anything in December.
• Delivery, setup and collection details agreed before you confirm.

Get those six right and the rest is just picking a menu you'd be happy to eat yourself. When you're ready to see who's available, browse caterers for your event and start a conversation with one that fits the brief.