Great food for your Guests

Let me tell you a little bit about our food. I’ve told you that You, not your Guests, are our real Customer. The weird thing though is that you, our real Customer, don’t often get to enjoy our food, yet you’re still responsible for deciding whether to buy more of it! Your Guests will sometimes actually break down and tell you how the food was, but most of the time it’s a “no news is good news” situation. In other words your Guests will only go out of their way to tell you anything about the food if it was unacceptable. And although this is true, please know that we understand completely that only by having outstanding taste, presentation and freshness in our food will we satisfy your Guests and therefore keep you calling us back again and again. No matter how good all of the other stuff is, if our food is less than excellent then we won’t be hearing from you again.

Q. How do you decide what goes onto your Menu?

Over the years we’ve developed a process for deciding what items make it onto our Menu. And because we have a group of creative folks here at Gourmet FoodWorks we’re always coming up with Menu possibilities. But we check them against our Menu Development Guidelines to make sure they’re going to be a successful item for our Customers and their Guests.

Here are Gourmet FoodWork’s Menu Development Guidelines:

Great Taste

Beautiful Presentation

Nothing too Bizarre

Easy to Eat

Fresh Tasting

All Sauces, Spreads & Dressings on the “Side”

Great Taste… First and foremost the food must taste great. We use great care in selecting and making the items on our Menu. We use excellent ingredients like real Turkey Breast (not some sort of gelatinous goo better known as “Turkey Loaf!”) and high quality cheeses. Our Chicken Breasts are also the “real deal” and our excellent marinade makes them taste fantastic. The bread we use is either baked by us or by the best European style bread-maker in St. Louis; Companion Bake House. We make our own side salads from scratch so they’re always fresh and tasty. Our Baked Goods are just excellent and are all as fresh as can be. Our sauces, like our Creamy White Wine Sauce are all scratch-made so they always taste great. And we take great care in baking our own desserts right here on-site so they’ll always be just the way you like ‘em. And one item that is becoming increasingly popular with our Customers is our Wraps. Our six different Wraps (including two vegetarian options) are served chilled so they’re especially delicious during the warmer weather.

Beautiful Presentation… When it comes to food in the corporate setting not only does it need to taste great, it needs to be beautifully presented and the presentation of our food is second-to-none. We use high quality disposable serving trays and bowls to start with, but the real magic is added in the final touches that make your food look so good you’ll want take a picture of it! Our culinary staff really has a great time making sure that you smile when you see the presentation of your groups’ meal. We take pride in our food so that you can take pride in our food.

Nothing too Bizarre… We have to walk a fine line when we talk about “nothing too bizarre” for our Menu. We’ve found that when ordering for themselves, our Customers and their Guests are often willing to experiment and that’s why we have some interesting items on our Menu. On the other hand, we’ve also learned over the years that our Customers are more comfortable playing it a little safer when ordering for a group of folks they have never met. So while it might be fun for us to put lots of really adventurous selections on our Menu, we know that you will often be looking for popular favorites.

Easy to Eat… Messy food is a problem in a business situation. Oftentimes your group consists of people that don’t know each other very well and they’re all trying their best to look sharp and professional. Crispy baguettes may taste great as sandwich bread, but if the bread flakes off and leaves a pile of crumbs around (and on!) your Guest then maybe baguettes aren’t such a good choice for sandwich bread. Our sandwich breads (all 6 of them) for example, are very easy to eat and won’t leave a mess. Afterall, we don’t want to be held responsible for your Training Manager having to turn her beautiful scarf into a bib! Another example of how carefully we think about making our food easy-to-eat concerns our Box Lunches and what we call a “Utensil Set.” It contains a high quality Knife & Fork attractively wrapped in a thick Napkin and tied with a nice little green ribbon. A Moist Towellette, Chocolate Mint Reception Stick and our Gourmet Sandwich Condiments (Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard and Hellman’s / Heinz Mayonnaise). After many tries at putting these items inside the Box Lunches separately, we put them all into a clear plastic silverware bag. That way they would be easier for your Guest to find and they would also be kept separate from all of the food items in the Box Lunch thereby keeping the napkin clean and dry (and usable!). This is just one small thing but I hope that it shows you the type of thoughtfulness that goes into into everything we do.

Super Fresh and Super Safe… When your Guests are ready to eat, the food must look fresh and taste fresh so we make sure that every item on our Menu passes this test. Not only must the food be able to withstand the rigors of being trasported from our kitchen to your place but we also must be prepared if your group can’t break for their meal as planned. Because of the extra care that we put into this area you can rest assured that your Guests’ meals will always be super safe and absolutely delicious.

Sauces, Spreads & Dressings on the “Side” … We’ve found that our Customers don’t want to have to guess on Menu details like whether their Guests want Mayonaise or Mustard on their sandwich so we put all Condiments, Spreads, Salad Dressings and even Lettuce & Tomato (some people are allergic to Tomatoes) on the “side.” Even though it would be cheaper for us to put the sauce or spread on the Sandwich or Wrap, our Customers tell us that it really takes the hassle (and the risk) out of ordering for their Guests, especially when they don’t know them.