Make note of suggested arrival times and apparel guidelines that may be listed. If you receive a calendar invite for the event, make sure to reply with your status as soon as possible, even if you won’t be attending. Creating a calendar item with details like the address and time can be a huge help for getting everyone on the same page! When choosing a location for your event, avoid choosing a flashy, new restaurant that you’re dying to try (save that for your weekend adventures with friends.) Instead, take the safe route and make reservations somewhere you’ve been to before that’s dependable, consistent and convenient for all attendees – geographically and cuisine-wise.Īs a guest, it’s important to stay up-to-date on all the important information about your lunch plans. For both hosts and guests alike, a little bit of preparation can go a long way towards avoiding missteps prior to lunchtime.Īs a host, it is your responsibility to set reservations and clearly communicate the need-to-know information to your guests. If you’re looking to avoid making dining faux pas, pull up a seat at our table for five tips for successful business lunches: Logistics Lessonsįirst and foremost, there’s a lot of planning that goes into setting up business lunches long before any plates hit the table. Yet, there a plenty of opportunities for semi-formal eating that pop up over the course of any career – from a first day lunch with a new boss to an introductory meal with a potential client. When it comes to business lunch best practices, the best most of us have to go off of is word-of-mouth and unwritten rules. Unfortunately, proper business meal etiquette isn’t really something that’s baked into most university gen ed courses. It wasn’t until years later, once I had grown out of period 4 lunch at Bobcat Elementary and graduated into the world of semi-professional, often awkward business lunches, that I realized that it was, indeed, possible to fail at eating.
When my grandma would ask me what my strongest subject was in school, I used to announce proudly, “lunch!” (I was only half-kidding.) To my pint-sized self, it seemed like a fairly safe answer “who could be bad at lunch?” I thought.