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The meeting Management Blog

Know what to prepare, for how many, and where, before anyone calls

AskCody for catering managers

You are the catering manager who feeds every meeting on time. AskCody brings every order to your team complete, straight from the Outlook invite, and tells you the moment a meeting moves or is canceled.

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The challenge

Why does the kitchen always hear about changes last?

You know the call. Lunch for twelve is plated for 12:00, and someone mentions the meeting moved to 13:00 in another room. The order came by email, the dietary notes by phone, the headcount in a reply-all, and the change came from nobody, because the change happened in an Outlook calendar your team never sees.

Every late change means wasted food, a rushed second round and a team that looks slow for something it never heard about. This is what one move looks like.

A lunch order for twelve people today at 12:00 in Room 4, with two vegetarians and no nuts. At 10:15 the meeting moves to 13:00. The kitchen got the order by email, the dietary notes by phone and the headcount by email, but nobody told it about the room change or the time change. At 12:00 lunch for twelve arrives in an empty room, and at 13:00 a second lunch is made in a hurry. One change, and the kitchen is the last to know.

The five challenges behind it

01

Orders in pieces

The order, the dietary needs and the headcount arrive by email, phone and in passing, and somebody has to stitch them together.

02

Changes you never see

Meetings move in Outlook. Unless someone remembers to tell the kitchen, you prepare for a plan that no longer exists.

03

Waste you pay for twice

A canceled meeting nobody mentioned is food in the bin and a second order made in a hurry.

04

Tickets on the wall

Paper tickets and printouts are hard to update and impossible to share with the team on the floor.

05

On time, every time

Every meeting expects the coffee on the table when the first person walks in, whatever changed before lunch.

One meeting

Every order comes from the meeting itself

People order catering, room setups and AV in the AskCody Services add-in, inside the same Outlook invite as the room. Each team gets its own request from that one meeting, with the room, the time, the number of people and the notes attached, so your team prepares from the plan, not from a thread.

One meeting, three service teams. An Outlook invite for a product launch on Thursday 09:00 to 12:00 in Conference Room 4 for 20 people carries three services: coffee and breakfast for 20, tables in a U-shape and an extra screen at the front. Each request goes to its own service provider in AskCody: Catering services has accepted the breakfast, Facility services has readied the U-shape, and IT services has the screen pending. Each team has its own members, rooms, opening days, deadlines and notification email.

An organizer plans a meeting in the Outlook invite and opens the AskCody Services add-in, next to AskCody Bookings and AskCody Visitors. Two orders are added to the same meeting: lunch for 4 at 12:30 and coffee and cake for 4 at 14:00, with a comment to the kitchen about one vegetarian and one gluten free. In the AskCody portal, the kitchen sees both orders with the meeting, the room and the time, and accepts them. When the meeting is moved or canceled, the orders follow the meeting.
Complete orders

Orders that arrive complete

Your menu lives in AskCody: single items, package deals and arrangements in categories, each with a price, a description and an optional preparation time. People pick from it in the Outlook invite, and you can make fields such as dietary notes or a cost center required, so an order cannot arrive without them.

See how meeting catering works

Your day

Today, tomorrow and pending, at a glance

The Services Portal is your team's daily tool. See today's and tomorrow's orders and everything still pending, accept or reject each request, or auto-accept orders placed in time. Mark them readied and completed as you go, and print the list in full or compact form, filtered by room for your delivery rounds.

See the Services Portal

From request to ready in the AskCody Services Portal. A request arrives as Pending, from the Outlook add-in or created with New request in the portal. The service team accepts it, or auto-accept takes every order placed in time. When it is prepared the team marks it Readied, ready for delivery or pickup, and it is set to Completed when the delivery time has passed. The organizer is emailed when the request is accepted, readied or rejected.
Preparation deadlines for meeting services. The Canteen, a service provider in AskCody, is open Monday to Friday, its deadline is 12:00 the day before, and a buffet needs 5 days' notice. An Outlook invite for a team day on Wednesday 12:00 to 16:00 includes coffee and sandwiches and a buffet for 14. Coffee and sandwiches must be ordered by Tuesday 12:00. For the buffet, AskCody counts 5 open days back, Tuesday, Monday, Friday, Thursday and Wednesday, skipping the weekend when the Canteen is closed, so the buffet must be ordered by the Wednesday before. The item deadline overrules the provider's deadline but still respects the provider's opening days.
Your rules

Deadlines that give your kitchen time

Set your opening days and a preparation deadline, such as 12:00 the day before, and give items like buffets a longer one. Choose the rooms you deliver to, or run as pickup only, and hold buffer time before and after a meeting for setup and clearing.

See booking rules and policies

When plans change

When the meeting moves, the order moves with it

Orders are tied to the meeting in Microsoft Exchange. When a meeting moves to a room and time you serve, the order moves with it, you are emailed, and an accepted order returns to Pending so you confirm the new time. When a meeting is canceled, the order is canceled and you are notified.

Once you have marked an order readied, or its deadline has passed, it is detached instead of changed, and the organizer is told, so nothing you have already prepared is quietly rewritten.

When a meeting moves in Outlook, the catering order follows to the new time and room. When it is canceled, the order is canceled and the kitchen and organizer are notified. If the order was already readied, the deadline has passed or the new room is not served, the order is detached and the organizer decides.

What it's worth

What changes for you, and for the people around you

When every order arrives complete and every change reaches you in time, the noise goes out of the kitchen. Here is what that is worth.

FOR YOU

Fewer calls and reorders

Complete orders from the invite and changes that reach you automatically, instead of chasing details by phone.

FOR YOUR TEAM

Less waste, less rush

Canceled meetings cancel their orders, and moved meetings move them, so food is made once, for the right time.

FOR EVERY MEETING

On the table on time

The coffee and lunch in the right room when the first person walks in.

How an investment manager runs 98 meeting rooms from one Outlook invite

One of the largest institutional investors in the capital markets used to prepare a meeting in five steps: book the room, then email AV, facilities, the kitchen and security. With AskCody, the room, AV, room setup, catering and visitors sit in one Outlook invite, and every team gets its task from the same meeting.

5 to 1

five separate steps per meeting became one Outlook invite

1 to 2 hours

saved every day, by the catering team's own estimate

98 rooms

and 144 room displays in a 12-story headquarters

Read the investment manager story

Manager of Workplace Services
Manager of Workplace Services

Catering, setup, AV and visitors together

“I don’t believe the other vendors can do the catering, the room setup, and AV requests as well as the visitor management piece altogether as seamlessly. Also, what we found was the AskCody user experience was just slicker.”

Jesper Imhof Rosendahl, IT Project Manager
Jesper Imhof RosendahlIT Project Manager

Rooms and catering in one overview

“AskCody’s platform gives us an easy overview of available rooms, as well as quick access to book catering for our meetings. Without AskCody, booking premises is ineffective, which results in a large waste of resources.”

Dale Pollock, Conference Services Manager
Dale PollockConference Services Manager

Every request for a room, under one roof

“The fact that admins can manage each reservation for a room and each request that is needed for that event or meeting all under one roof really helped a lot with organizing... Everyone gets it, and we don’t have to have five or six different emails going back and forth for each meeting.”

Susann Holloway, Conference Services Manager
Susann HollowayConference Services Manager

More attorneys per secretary

“Our secretaries managed two or three attorneys and partners before. Now they’re managing maybe five or six. It’s only possible to manage that increased workload, because they can handle everything in one spot with AskCody.”

Nané Pr’Out, Director of Information Technology
Nané Pr’OutDirector of Information Technology

Cancel the meeting, and the room frees up

“The biggest impact I think is simply the ease of reserving conference rooms when you’re scheduling meetings... and also when you cancel a meeting, that the conference room frees up, and you don’t have to do additional steps to go into another system and remove it.”

Anthony Moore, IT Director
Anthony MooreIT Director

Ten bookers used to mean ten ways to book

“Ten different people booking a meeting resulted in ten different ways of creating a meeting, and everything that goes with it... With AskCody employees can now book rooms and request services themselves, and it gives them a kind of self-service aspect where they can take control of their own meetings.”

Common questions from catering managers

What does AskCody do for catering managers?

AskCody gives catering teams every order straight from the Outlook invite, with the room, time, headcount and notes attached, in one Services Portal. When a meeting moves or is canceled, the order follows it, and the kitchen is notified.
How do orders reach the kitchen?

People order in the AskCody Services add-in in Outlook, inside the meeting invite. The order appears in the Services Portal with the meeting subject, room, time, requester, delivery location and notes. Phone orders go in with New request, the same form as Outlook.

See the Services Portal
What happens when a meeting is moved or canceled?

If a meeting moves to a room and time you serve, the order moves with it, you are emailed, and an accepted order returns to Pending. If it is canceled, the order is canceled and you are notified. An order already readied, past its deadline or moved to a room you do not serve is detached, and the organizer is told.

Read how Follow-the-Meeting works
Can we set deadlines and opening days?

Yes. Each service provider sets opening days and a preparation deadline, such as 12:00 the day before, and an item can have a longer preparation time that overrides it. Each provider serves selected rooms, or can run as pickup only.
Can we manage our own menu and prices?

Yes. Items can be single items, package deals or arrangements in categories, each with a price, description, SKU, VAT category and optional preparation time. Seasonal items can be hidden without deleting them, and new prices apply to new orders right away.
Can orders be charged to a cost center?

Yes. Orders can carry a cost center, custom properties such as a project code, and required fields, and Finance can create CSV reports of settled requests or feed an ERP system through the Services API.
Does the kitchen need Outlook?

No. Your team works in the Services Portal, while the people ordering stay in Outlook. You can accept requests manually or auto-accept orders placed in time.

See how your kitchen's week would run

Talk to a consultant about how orders arrive complete from the Outlook invite, and follow the meeting when the plan changes.
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