Retirement Party Catering For Someone Who Hates A Fuss

The guest of honour usually did not want this

That is the defining fact of a retirement party and almost nobody plans around it. Forty years of work, a card, and somebody who would quite like it to be over by half three.

Which is useful, because it tells you exactly what to organise: something warm and generous that does not require the retiree to stand at the front for two hours.

Keep it short and put the food early

The opposite of every other party in this list. A retirement do works best over about two hours, with the food out near the beginning rather than the end.

Why: people come from the office, say what they came to say, eat, and go back or go home. Food at the start gives everybody something to do with their hands during the awkward first twenty minutes, which is the part the retiree is dreading.

Buffet 5 at £7.70 a head, sandwiches and savouries, is the standard answer and the right one. Buffet 9 at £11.00 if it is a genuinely long service being marked and you want the table to look like it.

Where to hold it

Three options and they suit different people.

In the office, at lunchtime. Cheapest, shortest, and by far the easiest for somebody who hates a fuss. Delivered and laid out in a meeting room, an hour, done.

A function room after work. More of an occasion, and better if colleagues want to bring partners. Order for slightly more than you expect and put the food out about half an hour in.

Somewhere they actually like. The most thoughtful version and the least common. A club, a pub function room, somewhere connected to what they will be doing next rather than what they are leaving.

The speech problem

Somebody will make one, and it will be longer than planned. Food that has been sitting out through a fifteen-minute speech is food that has been sitting out.

Either serve first and speak after, or tell us to deliver for immediately after the speeches. Both work; what does not is putting the buffet out at two and starting the speeches at ten past.

If it is a big one

For a long-serving retirement where the whole department is coming (sixty, eighty, a hundred) the hot buffet at £23.50 a head with a fifty-person minimum turns it into a proper event. Three mains and three sides across four menus.

Above that, a hog roast from £795 if there is somewhere outside. Worth it for the retirement of somebody who has genuinely earned a fuss, whether or not they wanted one.

Practical bits

Order the cake separately or bring one: most retirement dos have a cake with a specific joke on it, and that is not a thing to outsource. Homemade cakes are £2.25 a head as a buffet extra if you just want something sweet on the table.

Dietary requirements: every buffet is 30% vegetarian as standard, with vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal portions prepared separately and labelled. In an office you probably already know the numbers. Give them to us rather than guessing.

Organising one? Corporate catering has the buffet range and prices, and a credit account if the company is paying.