How daily staff lunch catering starts
Setting up daily or weekly staff lunches with Dana Prime follows three clear steps, designed so an office manager, HR lead or admin coordinator can plan with confidence before committing to ongoing service.
- Brief: Tell us your headcount, office location in Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Sharjah, preferred delivery window, and any dietary patterns among your colleagues. We ask about existing serving space, whether you need our team on site, and how often you want the menu to rotate.
- Tasting: Before any booking, we arrange a free tasting so you and a few colleagues can sample dishes drawn from our 136-dish, 16-course range. This is where we confirm portion sizes, spice levels, and which dishes suit your office's tastes and any allergen concerns.
- Delivery: Once the menu and schedule are agreed, we begin daily or weekly delivery from our ICAD II kitchens in Abu Dhabi, with our own delivery, setup and serving team handling transport, layout and collection.
Because we operate our own kitchens and logistics rather than subcontracting, the same team that cooks your lunch also delivers and, where required, serves it. This keeps the handover between kitchen and office short, which matters for daily food safety and consistency.
Most offices start with a two-week trial period to confirm reliability of timing and food quality before moving to a monthly supply arrangement. We quote after the tasting, once headcount, frequency and menu style are confirmed, so there are no assumptions about what you are paying for.
For offices that need to onboard quickly, we can usually schedule a tasting within a few working days of your first enquiry, with daily service beginning shortly after sign-off, provided delivery access and any required permits at your building are confirmed in advance.
Vegetarian, vegan and allergen handling
Most offices have a mix of dietary needs among colleagues, and we build this into the planning stage rather than treating it as an afterthought. During the initial brief, we ask you to collect a simple headcount breakdown: how many colleagues require vegetarian meals, how many are vegan, and whether anyone has specific allergen concerns such as nuts, shellfish or gluten.
From our menu range, vegetarian and vegan options include dishes such as chana masala, vegetable moussaka, mushroom risotto, grilled halloumi skewers, and a mixed vegetable pilaf, so colleagues on plant-based diets still have genuine variety across the week rather than a single repeated substitute meal.
- Vegetarian and vegan counts are confirmed per delivery, not estimated once and left unchanged
- Common allergens are flagged at the tasting stage so we can recommend suitable substitutions
- Dishes are prepared and packed with separation in mind, reducing the risk of cross-contact between meat, dairy and plant-based meals
- Any changes in headcount or dietary mix can be updated ahead of each delivery cycle by WhatsApp or a standing weekly form
Because our kitchens hold ISO 22000 and HACCP certification, allergen handling and ingredient traceability follow documented procedures rather than informal kitchen practice. This matters for daily office catering specifically, since the same colleagues are eating from us repeatedly, and any oversight compounds over a working week rather than a single event.
We recommend office managers keep a simple internal list of dietary requirements by name or department, shared with us at onboarding and updated as staff join or leave. This makes each day's delivery accurate without your team having to re-confirm numbers every morning, while still giving you the flexibility to adjust for meetings, leave or new starters.
Delivery windows, setup and collection
Daily staff lunch delivery needs to be dependable, arriving within a tight window so food is fresh and colleagues are not left waiting past their lunch break. We agree a fixed delivery window with each office, typically ahead of the standard midday lunch period, and hold to that schedule as a routine part of ongoing service.
Our own delivery, setup and serving team handles the full cycle rather than passing food to a third-party courier. This means the people delivering to your office understand food handling standards and can also assist with basic setup, such as arranging chafing dishes, cutlery and serving stations if your office does not have its own pantry staff.
- Delivery from our ICAD II kitchens in Abu Dhabi to offices across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah
- Fixed daily or weekly delivery windows agreed at onboarding
- Optional on-site setup and serving support for larger offices or shared pantry areas
- Collection of trays, chafing equipment and serving ware after the lunch period, where applicable
For offices in Dubai and Sharjah, delivery timing accounts for travel distance from our Abu Dhabi kitchens, so we agree realistic windows during onboarding rather than promising times that cannot be met consistently across the wider UAE road network. If your building has specific loading dock access, security clearance or delivery restrictions, we ask for these details upfront so our team arrives prepared rather than delayed at reception.
Larger offices with multiple floors or departments sometimes prefer staggered delivery, with food arriving in batches to keep it fresher for later lunch sittings. We can accommodate this within the same daily schedule once headcount and floor layout are understood, and we review delivery performance periodically with each client to catch any recurring timing issues early.
Why offices choose Dana Prime for daily lunch catering
Dana Prime has operated kitchens since 1998, and today prepares more than 7,000 meals daily from our facility in Abu Dhabi Industrial City (ICAD II). For an office manager or HR lead responsible for daily staff lunches, this scale matters because it demonstrates the kitchen infrastructure needed to hold a consistent standard across many meals, every working day, without treating any single office as an afterthought.
We hold ISO 22000 and HACCP certification, which govern how food is prepared, stored and transported. These are not one-off checks but ongoing standards our kitchens are audited against, relevant to any office considering a long-term catering relationship rather than a single event.
- Own kitchens in Abu Dhabi Industrial City (ICAD II), rather than a subcontracted or shared facility
- Own delivery, setup and serving team, so the same organisation manages the full journey from kitchen to office
- Currently serving 22 client organisations across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah
- 4.6-star Google rating from clients using our ongoing catering service
- A free tasting before booking, so your office can confirm dish quality and suitability before agreeing to daily or weekly service
We encourage every prospective client to check references directly rather than relying on our word alone. We can share contact details for existing client organisations of a similar size or sector on request, so you can ask them directly about delivery reliability, menu variety and how issues, if any arose, were resolved.
Capacity is also a practical consideration for daily lunch catering: because we already prepare thousands of meals each day, adding your office's headcount to our schedule does not require us to scale up from a standing start, which reduces the risk of early disruption that can come with newer or smaller catering operations still building their kitchen capacity.
