Food Ideas For Breakfast Meeting

How To Host A Successful One?

Looking for food ideas for breakfast meeting? Breakfast potluck ideas? Breakfast buffet menu ideas or inspirations of the similar kind? You came to the right place.

Not only food ideas for breakfast meeting, but also guides of how to plan from scratch. Tips of using some store bought food to put a theme party together.

I always wonder if it is because morning is the beginning of the day when people have the mood to conquer the world which is the reason why there are more meetings in the morning instead of any other time during the day.

Churches always have morning meetings. When holiday seasonings are here, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are more meetings of this kind at work.

Having participated in this kind of meetings many times, I do observe a lot of things that many people may not realize. What is it? Remember this and you will make your crowd very happy. And you will do it over and over again. Are you ready?

Rule #1 - Less Sweet

People tend to love the warm and savory dishes more than sweet pastries, regardless time of the year, gender or age group. Does that mean you only focus your effort and time on those kind of dishes? No, variety is the main goal. What I recommend you is that having more savory dishes instead of sweet.

My little one loves to sign us up to host the coffee time after church so that he has a chance to help out. What it does is that each hosting family will bring all the food and drink that Sunday morning and serve everybody in church right after the service.

That's right. You need to pay attention to the average number of attendees so that you will know how much food and drink you need to bring. Even though it is coffee time which is more like a refreshment instead of a meal, you still need to put in a lot of work.

A side note: we know a Korean family that they go to a Korean Christian church. Instead of serving breakfast or snack, the hosting family needs to bring in all authentic Korean dishes for lunch.

Beware: Tips sharing on this page may not apply on scenario similar to this.

My point is to pay attention what others do and the reaction from the guests. Then, go from there. And the less-sweet-stuff rule still applies for putting together your food ideas for breakfast meeting.

A typical breakfast buffet that you find many dishes are sweet. But you can do more than that.

Breakfast Buffet Menu Ideas

Savory Dishes

As much as people love to mop these dishes, you may not have enough time to warm them up in the morning while you try to get around and get out of the door. So, always try to cook it ahead of time and warm them up in the morning.

So, how many dishes should you prepare? Even though the crowd could be very big, the rule of thumb is.....

Just cook enough where you can fit everything in the oven to warm them up in the morning at the same temperature.

Sweet and Serve-In-Room-Temperature Dishes

It is about varieties. It is also about not to kill yourself with all the craziness. Cooking something sweet and/or any kind of food that you can serve in room temperature will work out perfectly to fulfill this goal.

Drinks

No matter when this meeting takes place during the day, always make sure to have coffee, water with tea bags on the side and juice.

Sometimes, people like to add alcoholic drinks into the breakfast buffet menu. If it is work related, skip the alcohol. If it is personal, it will depend on the situation. Somebody gets caught or hurt from intoxication is the last thing you want to see. Make your best judgement and always keep in mind that safety is the number one priority.

Name Your Food

Being the host, you will be very busy. People will ask you about your food while you are serving or doing something else.

To avoid stressing yourself out, write down the name of each dish and put the name in front of it. People may still ask you the question, "What is this?" But there won't be that many.

Office Food Ideas for Breakfast Meeting

Having a breakfast meeting or a breakfast potluck in the office is very different from hosting one of your own, especially if almost everybody will participate in the event and everybody plan to bring something in.

Throughout all these years working in an office environment, there are always at least 50 people in the same building, where I work, regardless the time of the year. After COVID, this cut down into halves. It is not because employees got let go, but many people tend to work from home and more remote from the office. As a result, even though they want to attend, they won't be able to make it.

To manage everybody not to bring in about the same thing for a breakfast buffet or meeting could be challenging.

Here are the tips that how my co-workers manage:

Organizer

There is a social committee to organize these employer-employee events. This group will take care of the theme of the breakfast meeting, table settings, plastic wares and so forth.

Group Assignment

As mentioned earlier, if 50 people brings in some food or drink, chances of having the same things or similar kind are very high.

So, first of all, you need do a little bit of analysis. It is all about common sense. In most breakfast parties, you need more food than drink. In other words, you will assign a bigger group of people to bring food than drink.

Then, look into the group by last name in alphabetical order. Assuming there will be around 50 people attending the party. About 8 people bring breakfast beverages, such as orange juice, coffee and any beverages appropriate for the event.

The rest of them will split into 2 groups. One brings sweet pastries and the other one brings casseroles. Of course, you can add more categories. Always try to be as general as you can, in terms of the names of the categories. It allows people to think of different varieties to bring in.

Here comes the magical part: assign 3 groups going by the first alphabet of their last names. For instance, last names starting from A-F bring beverages, G-P casseroles and Q-Z pastries.

As mentioned earlier, you need to do some analysis first before assigning these groups in order to have the right number of people for each category. You don't want to see 10 people bringing beverages and 5 people bringing casserole.

On a side note, people may travel, take vacation hours or absent from work for any reasons. So, the way how you allocate the numbers will be more than what you expect. Like having 8 people to take care of the beverages, it may end up only 5 bringing in. Even though there is still a chance that the entire group of 8 people brings in drink, it is still a reasonable amount. Apply this same theory on assigning the other groups.

Information Transparency

Information is power.

Create a folder with an electronic word document in a shared network where people can go in to check what others are going to bring for the breakfast meeting. Allow everybody to update the list on their own as well.

If someone sees a name of a dish that sounds very similar to what the other person plans to bring, this will make that person thinks again. This avoids duplication. That means more varieties of food for the event.

The other benefit of this is to spark some ideas. If someone wants to bring something in, it may trigger them to think of other food ideas for breakfast meeting merely by looking at what other people plan to bring.

At the end of the event, encourage all the participants to put their recipes here in this folder and share. Many of them would love to find out how certain people made some great and delicious dishes.

(Required) Items To Bring

I found that no matter if this breakfast meeting is at church or in the office, somebody has already got Plates, Napkins, Cups, Cutlery and Table Cloths ready. If not, here is some advice for you:

1) Disposable; Less Clean-Up - You are the host. Even though there may be volunteers to help you for clean up later, there is still a lot of work.

In my experience, using disposable cups and plates, it still takes about at least 30 minutes to wash all silverwares and clearing up the table.

To go green, use paper or clear plastic products.

2) Keep It Small - Since it is a breakfast meeting, the majority of your crowd anticipate everything is smaller in portion. Therefore, use dessert plates, smaller napkins and cups.

Host A NO-Cook and NO-Bake Breakfast Meeting

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