Ask HN: Why does your company run corporate events?

[wtroughton]

Hey HN, I’m a founder of a startup trying to solve problems for coffee shops and cafes when it comes to catering through corporate channels. If your company has hosted a corporate event involving food or beverages, OR your team is thinking about hosting a company event, I’d love to hear from you.

I'm curious what is the occasion that you have to host an event and what type of event is it? Once you've decided to do catering, how do you find and contact a food vendor or catering business?

[wtroughton]

When I worked at Amazon, our team decided to have a theme for each sprint consisting of breakfast items.

Product launches & demos were small celebrations at the end of the sprint. So one sprint was Croissant Week, another may be Donut Week, and the scrum master would be responsible for bringing in breakfast at Demo Day.

We'd get breakfast from a local bakery or cafe, and because our team was 10-12 people, there wasn't a need for a large delivery.

[wtroughton]

Examples that I can think off the top of my head are 1) all-hands and 2) networking events.

These tend to be formulaic from my experience, they consist of a catering plates full of finger foods like sandwiches, cheese, chips, cookies.