If you have ever been in charge of ordering lunch for the office or navigating dietary preferences for a work event, you know that it isn't nearly as straightforward as it would seem. Balancing personal tastes, accommodating restrictions, and ensuring everyone leaves satisfied feels more like navigating a minefield than a walk in the park. Often, when it does go right, businesses, organizations, and groups resort to ordering from the same place every time to streamline the process. That is counter-productive to the intent of the meal in the first place—employee appreciation, satisfaction and retention, and an overall enjoyable company culture. Let's be real: nobody wants Freddy's pizza delivered every Friday, even if it is good (and complimentary).
Catering is a complex world that requires several logistics that most individuals never even consider. Jay Shah, co-founder of Dice Menu, an officer catering company, explains that traditional catering methods fall into three main categories: direct restaurant orders, marketplace services, and event planning, each with its own unique set of challenges.
Shah adds that direct restaurant orders provide a specific dining experience but limit variety, forcing hosts to stick to one cuisine or restaurant. This can become monotonous and takes away from the impact of office lunches for employees. Marketplace services, on the other hand, offer a wide variety of options but require significant effort from the user to understand portioning and managing allergens. "Despite their packages, they lack the flexibility to handle specific dietary restrictions easily," Shah notes.
Event planners, on the other hand, can provide variety and ease of use but at a substantially higher cost. They might be knowledgeable, but their services often come with a premium price tag. These methods also fail to adequately address the core issue: the average person's lack of understanding of placing a catering order that meets all needs, including portioning, dietary restrictions, and delivery logistics. "Ordering for groups of people should not be this complicated," states Shah.
Shah has created a dynamic AI-powered service that instead simplifies and enhances the ordering experience. Dice Menu brings those office lunches together without the hassle of logistics. It reduces decision fatigue and makes the group ordering process seamless. Dice Menu's solutions are tailored for individuals with little to no experience in catering.
Shah was brought onto the Dice Menu team by the late Gishnu Das, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has taken over as CEO since Das's passing. "Das was working on the neurology of how people make decisions. That's how we came up with the idea of Dice Menu. When you're given too many options, it creates decision fatigue, where you almost give up or you just get tired of the process. At Dice Menu, we have three main goals: one is to save users time, two is to make them look good, and three is to eliminate long-term decision fatigue."
Dice Menu helps users place orders for groups ranging from 15 to over 100 people without needing any prior knowledge of portioning or dietary requirements. Orders can be tailored to specific dietary restrictions and cuisine preferences. Whether it's individual meal boxes or a buffet-style setup for larger events, Dice Menu ensures everything is labeled and organized. Best of all, Dice Menu provides users with the option of a wide spectrum of cuisines without the need for endless research on multiple restaurants. "Essentially, we make people's lives easier and make them look good!"
Unlike other catering models, which require substantial user effort, Dice Menu offers a streamlined process with its AI assistance. Users can simply input their requirements, and Dice Menu provides three specialized menus that are fully customizable, which greatly minimizes decision fatigue. The menus are crafted from a network of locally vetted restaurants, providing a wider selection of options while supporting local businesses. Dice Menu's AI caters to guests' specific dietary needs, which marketplaces struggle to accommodate. Dice Menu creates a personalized experience, helping office managers and executive assistants meet all the criteria for their catering needs making sure there is something for everyone.
Shah adds, "With other players in the catering space, you're still going in and having to do a good amount of work yourself figuring out which restaurant and cuisine your team wants. While the marketplaces might help with the portioning, there is still a lack of customization. You can't call them up directly and say, 'My CEO has a tomato allergy. Does this menu item have tomatoes? You'd have to go through the hassle of contacting the restaurant directly, taking those extra steps to ensure that certain criteria, like no tomatoes, are met."
"It's a catering assistant in your back pocket. You can talk to it as such, like, 'Hey, I need food for 30 people. These are my dietary restrictions; this is my budget. We're looking for Thai or Mexican food.' From there, it will send you specialized, fully customizable menu options, only three at a time to eliminate the decision fatigue that comes with all those choices for a large group of people. And then once you pick one, you're all set."
Sustainability and Giving Back
Aside from helping place catering orders, Shah and the Dice Menu team have been focusing on limiting food waste and ways to give back. They have implemented multiple methods to limit the amount of food waste for each order, whether that be providing to-go containers for storage or working with a local food bank to donate the leftover food. In May of 2024, Dice Menu rolled out their "Buy a Meal, Give a Meal" program. For each meal bought through Dice Menu, a meal will be donated through a partnered non-profit organization. "We want to be the type of company that you are proud to work with and work for," Shah states.
Learn more about Dice Menu's solution, and go ahead and order some food for your team today. Just Dice it!
Join the Conversation