How I Cook for 30 with 24 Hours' Notice

A client got in touch at midday on a Monday — a London-based SaaS company with a brand new client in Norwich, launching a new customer service tool the next day. Launch days are a lot for any team, and the buyer wanted to make sure staff were properly looked after with lunch, rather than left to fend for themselves in the middle of it. The booking was made from their London office, for delivery here. I was halfway through my usual weekly delivery run - an unusually long one with road works and summer holiday traffic - when the message came in.

I said yes. With almost no time for back and forth, the buyer handed over most of the menu decisions to me — which meant trust, rather than a brief to second-guess.

By the end of that Monday I'd confirmed the menu, sent an invoice, and written a complete shopping list. I built it around two salads I know well — a keto chicken and broccoli, and a vegan, gluten-free spicy cauliflower — then a trio of ciabatta sandwiches on fresh local bread: egg mayo with deeply retro cress, hummus with roasted peppers, and Dijon mustard with ham and cheese. A berry medley with both dairy and non-dairy yoghurt covered the sweet end. Between the four options, every dietary requirement in the room was catered for. All dishes I've made often enough to know the quantities without having to think twice. A trip to the cash and carry sorted packaging, and produce came from wherever I could get it at that notice — but the food went out fresh, well made, and on time, which is what mattered.

Tuesday started early. Four hours of prep, then out the door for a midday delivery.

It was a first booking for this client, and quite possibly a one-off — but the feedback afterwards was better than I could have hoped for: genuinely good food, and enough of an impression on the end client in the room that there's talk of using me again for offsites and company events. The buyer later admitted the whole point of going local was that he didn't want to spend good money on bad food, and wasn't willing to fall back on a supermarket sandwich platter.

What made the day work wasn't luck. It was having dishes I could make with my eyes closed, suppliers I could call same-day, and enough experience to know exactly what a room of 30 people with mixed dietary needs can eat. Twenty-four hours isn't ideal — I'd always prefer a little more — but it's manageable when the groundwork is laid.

If your business needs food to appear, correctly, on short notice, that's my speciality.

Got an event with a tighter turnaround than you'd like? Get in touch and let's see what's possible 👈