Nothing brings a team together like good food and great company.
Team lunches are more than communal meals—they’re a chance to break the boredom of routine, celebrate wins, and create a culture that helps everyone feel connected.
Whether it’s to mark a project milestone or just an excuse to get away from desks, a shared meal allows everyone to relax, bond, and recharge.
Around 70% of employees say shared meals help build stronger connections. That’s 7 out of every 10 employees looking to spend in-person time with their colleagues—and this in the heyday of remote working!
So, let’s explore some exciting and effective team-building lunch ideas beyond pizza at the conference table. Make your team lunches something every team member looks forward to.
How to Plan the Perfect Team Lunch: 14 Exciting Ideas
Why Are Team Lunches Important?
Breaking bread together is a time-honored tradition. And somewhere within humankind’s collective consciousness, that yearning for connection remains strong. That’s why team lunches are important—they offer a relaxed setting where colleagues can unwind, connect, and get to know each other outside of their typical, formal roles (over a free lunch!).
They help break down silos and foster open communication, making collaboration smoother back at the desk.
A power-packed team lunch:
- Builds trust and connection: Sharing a meal in an informal setting encourages team members to see each other as peers. This familiarity builds trust and understanding, paving the way for smoother workplace collaboration
- Boosts morale and motivation: A team that feels appreciated is likelier to be engaged and motivated. Team lunches are a fun way for employees to feel valued and recognized, reinforcing team morale
- Encourages cross-department interaction: Often, employees work within their departments and are cooped up in their cubicles. Team lunches allow them to chat with colleagues who work in other areas of the company, breaking down communication barriers and strengthening workplace relationships.
- Fosters creativity and new ideas: Casual interactions can lead to unplanned brainstorming and fresh perspectives. Eliminating the “office” context can allow creative ideas to flow as team members freely share their thoughts
- Relieves stress: Stepping away from work allows everyone to recharge. A fun team lunch can reduce stress, increase job satisfaction, boost team morale, and bring everyone back refreshed and ready to tackle projects with renewed focus
Of course, organizing something everyone will enjoy isn’t always easy—everyone has an opinion, and some might just be there for the free food! But if you’re ready to dodge the dreaded “anything is fine” responses and experiment, this next section is for you!
⭐ Featured Template
Turn team lunches into power sessions with the Lunch and Learn Schedule Template. Organize fun, focused meetups that spark fresh ideas and stronger connections, all while sharing a meal.
Team Lunch Ideas
If you’re stuck between fancy catering and the same old pizza place, it’s time to shake things up. Here are some creative team-building lunch ideas that will make your next team lunch the talk of the water cooler.
Potluck-style lunch
Nothing says team bonding like homemade food! Ask everyone to bring a plate of their own lunch. This is a delicious way to learn more about each other’s backgrounds and tastes—and enjoy varied cuisine.
Themed lunch days
Choose a fun theme, like comfort food classics. Who’d say no to comfort food? Try homestyle dishes like mac and cheese, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes.
Food truck fiesta
Bring the food adventure to your office with different food trucks parked outside. It’s like a mini food festival right on-site, and don’t you think grabbing a bite in some fresh air is exciting?
Group cooking class
Virtual team-building activities can be fun and hilarious, so organize a virtual cooking event or an in-person class. They can be team-bonding experiences that result in something tasty you can all enjoy.
Guess what? It also works if you’re planning a virtual lunch!
Picnic in the park
Take the team for a stroll for some fresh air and snacks. A casual park picnic with blankets, some pizza rolls, and maybe some icebreaker games is a perfect way to get people chatting and connecting.
Build-your-own bar
This little DIY flair adds personality to lunchtime. You can choose from a salad bar bash, a taco bar, or a fun summer BBQ bar, where people get to DIY their lunch from options like grilled burgers, hot dogs, and side dishes like potato salad, coleslaw, and watermelon. Or organize a baked potato bar where everyone can make their own baked potato to their liking and choose from a slew of toppings.
💡Pro Tip: Customize the experience with sauce and topping stations. For a taco bar, include unique salsas, guacamole, and sour cream options.
Board game bash
Nothing brings people together like a lunch filled with board games. Sharing lunch with friendly game competitions, such as Uno or Jenga, creates a lively atmosphere brimming with laughter and transforms the break room into a welcoming space for connection.
It’s a great team-building lunch idea for large groups because everyone can jump in and bond naturally.
Around-the-world lunch
Bring global flavors to the table by picking a new cuisine each week—Thai, Indian, Italian, Mexican! It’s like going on a mini world tour, with everyone excited to try new dishes together. This team-building lunch idea also gently nudges the company culture, fusing everyone’s unique experiences and ideas.
💡Pro Tip: Create a themed lunch called ‘Around the world in 80 bites,’ sampling dishes from different countries. This will help team members explore different cultures through food and celebrate workplace diversity.
Local restaurant crawl
If you’re lucky to have some great food spots nearby, why stick to that boring meeting room for conversations? Start with appetizers at one spot, move to mains and side dishes at another, and wrap up with dessert to end the day on a sugary note.
If there’s a nip in the air, cozy up at the local coffee shop!
Cook-off challenge
You can put those cooking skills to the test with a friendly cook-off. Split into teams and compete to create the tastiest dish. This will bring out your team’s creativity and may even reveal their hidden cooking talent!
Salesforce knows great teamwork takes more than meetings and emails, so they stir things up with cooking classes and friendly cook-offs. These help them foster meaningful employee experiences and create opportunities for cross-departmental bonding.
Pizza party
Make your lunch break interactive with a DIY pizza station. Let everyone customize their pizzas with their favorite toppings—gooey cheese, fresh veggies, and a meat lover’s paradise with pepperoni, sausage, and bacon.
For an added twist, kick off a fun scavenger hunt while the pizzas bake. Of course, you can always order takeaway if you just can’t wait!
Dessert swap
Invite everyone to bring their favorite dessert, whether a family recipe, a local bakery find, or a homemade treat. Set up a dessert-tasting table where the team can sample a variety of sweets, vote on the crowd favorite, and even swap recipes.
It’s a fun, easy way to end the week with a sugar rush!
Virtual lunch for remote employees
The flexibility of choosing meals adds excitement and helps foster a sense of community, even from a distance. Send everyone a meal stipend and hop on a video call for a shared lunch. It’s an excellent approach for remote or global teams to stay connected and enjoy laughs together across distances.
Lunch and learn
Who says team lunches can’t be productive? You can host a lunch-and-learn session where each team member shares a cool skill, a life hack, or a story while everyone eats. It’s a chance for the entire team to learn something new in a casual, no-pressure manner.
Feeling inspired already? Awesome. But let’s make sure we’re not just arranging communal meals and hoping for the best. Here are some best practices for making your team lunches a hit!
Best Practices for Organizing Team Lunches
What’s the secret behind organizing the perfect team lunch? No, it’s not just delicious or free food. Thoughtful planning and consideration turn a simple meal into a memorable bonding experience!
We’ve rounded up some best practices for organizing your team lunches to keep everyone coming back for more.
Take everyone’s input
Determine the purpose of the lunch. Is it to celebrate a milestone, foster team bonding, or provide training? Asking everyone’s opinion will guide your planning and help you choose the right format and activities.
What easier way to do this than filling out Forms?
Forms let you focus more on fun and less on logistics. Using their intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can create a simple, customizable form to collect employees’ RSVPs, meal preferences, and dietary restrictions.
Plus, you can customize your form using various themes and avatar images.
Forms also lets you automate responses, instantly converting them into Tasks. This helps the organizer efficiently track attendance and preferences and even collect suggestions for the next team lunch.
Additionally, conditional logic in Forms enables fields to adapt based on individual responses, ensuring the form captures only relevant data. This saves time, promotes inclusivity by accommodating diverse preferences, and eases the entire process.
Plan it out and invite your team
If you’re hosting the lunch in person, choose the right venue, ensuring it’s accessible to all team members. If it’s a virtual lunch, create a comfortable virtual space where everyone can gather and chat. Aim for a schedule that works for everyone, avoiding busy days and looming deadlines.
Lock in the date early so everyone can pencil it into their schedules. Sending a calendar invite ahead of time helps ensure everyone’s on the same page and ready to join in on the fun.
’s Calendar can be your best friend here! With easy-to-use timeline views, you can track every detail, from RSVPs to catering. Switch between daily, weekly, or monthly views to highlight what matters most and keep those deadlines front and center.
Need to shuffle things around? Just drag & drop task durations and dependencies, and you’re done! Share your calendar with the team for real-time updates to keep everyone aligned.
Plus, syncing with Google or Outlook keeps your lunch plans organized across platforms, while custom reminders and alerts ensure no one misses a beat (or a bite)!
Take your team lunch organizing skills further with the Event Planning Template. This template lets you input all your event details, like date, time, and location, in a single location.
The task management features, including the List View and Board View, help delegate responsibilities for catering, invitations, logistics, and deadlines for accountability.
Use ’s Custom Fields to edit the template to specific needs and track RSVPs and dietary preferences. Collaborate on menu options and other resources using Docs.
Use the Calendar View to manage event timelines, ensuring everything runs smoothly before the big day.
Wait, there’s more! This template includes pre-built Docs with options for real-time editing and rich formatting, enabling the team to work on essential details like attendee lists, preferred meal options, billing, and vendor details.
This template is also excellent for tracking key tasks in organizing a team lunch, such as venue booking, catering, and budget status. Clear progress indicators and task assignments ensure that every detail is managed efficiently, keeping lunch on schedule and within budget.
Decide on the lunch format
Whether it’s a casual potluck lunch, a catered meal, or a cooking class, choose a format that aligns with your team’s preferences and the lunch objectives. Remember dietary restrictions and preferences to ensure everyone feels included.
Encourage participation
Encourage employee participation by involving them in the planning process. Ask for their input on food preferences, team-building activities, or theme ideas. This inclusion can boost excitement and turnout.
Chat can be your go-to tool for boosting employee enthusiasm and participation in team lunches! Here’s how:
- Create dedicated Chat channels for the team lunch to communicate in real time within the relevant project Spaces in . This has the added advantage of keeping both conversations and planning tasks in one place for complete context
- Use the FollowUps feature to assign messages as tasks, and delegate responsibility for making the reservations, handling the budget, or bringing the food
- Hold quick video or audio calls through SyncUps within direct messages and group conversations. It allows you to finalize details faster, fostering real-time collaboration and improving time management in the run-up to the big day
- Use Posts in Chat to share announcements or updates about the lunch, such as the finalized location and time, ensuring everyone is informed and can revisit the information later
- Pin the lunch planning chat at the top of your list for easy access so all team members can quickly find the conversation and stay updated. For example, you can pin the lunch-planning Chat to your sidebar to quickly access event photos and post-lunch feedback from team members
💡Pro Tip: Convert chat messages into tasks using AI in Chat. For example, if someone suggests a restaurant, you can create a task to check its availability with a click.
Plan team activities
Incorporate fun indoor and outdoor team-building activities or icebreakers to kickstart any team lunch. An interesting game, a trivia quiz, or a team-building exercise can lighten the mood and encourage conversation, especially if team members don’t know each other well.
Follow up
After lunch, gather feedback from the team using—you got it right!— Forms. What did they enjoy? What could be improved for next time? This information is invaluable for planning future lunches and shows your team that their opinions matter.
Document the experience
Capture photos or moments from the lunch to share with the team afterward. A recap email with highlights or a fun photo album can bring positivity to your workspace and remind everyone of the good time they had.
Celebrate the lunch’s success
Recognize and thank everyone who contributed to the lunch’s success, whether they brought food, helped choose the venue, or participated in team-building activities. Acknowledging efforts fosters a sense of community and encourages continued involvement in future events.
🍕Fun Fact: People around the world—the Italians, the Irish, the Indians—have been eating communal meals since time immemorial, sharing stories and laughter as they share delicious food.
Some communities even eat from the same plate, as exhorted by Prophet Muhammad:
‘Eat together and do not eat separately, for the blessing is in being together.’
Make Your Team Lunch A-Maize-Ing with !
The urge to work through the lunch hour is common. Maybe a project deadline is on the horizon, a mountain of paperwork needs to be wrapped up, or a client meeting is looming.
While a bustling office may seem productive at first glance, it can sometimes mask exhausted employees, low morale, and lost productivity. Once in a while, everyone should be able to step away from their desks and take a break.
And what’s a better tool for making the most of this break than ? It makes planning and coordinating fun team events easier. From choosing the cuisine to setting up interactive food stations or inviting a guest chef, doubles as a team-building app for your shared lunches.
Use it to set reminders, organize team lunch ideas, manage your team members’ dietary preferences, and even gather post-lunch feedback—all in one place.
Try today; it’s free!
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