If they company is catering a meal, that implies in office,
Not at all. Catering just means the company is purchasing the food. Sometimes that's at a convention center, sometimes a restaurant, sometimes a different venue, sometimes the office.
Catered food if from a restaurant or establishment often has either set food choices, special pricing or packaged deals. There are restaurants around here that you can book rooms and have the food catered they have the company book under their "catering menu".
Various sporting events also done in the past have been catered food.
Last night the Halloween event was at the office with food catered in. Last year they bought out a large room at a pickleball place paying for catered food and time at two pickleball courts. That was on a Saturday.
Past holiday work parties my husband has attended have never been at the office nor work hours and yet they were all catered food. Buying out Top Golf was still catered food with specific packages.
When my husband passed his P.E. exam his company took the ones who passed and their spouses/significant others after work hours to a restaurant (all you can eat) and paid thousands and thousands for food and liquor and desserts for the 20+ there (they bought out a room in the restaurant).
Don't get me wrong I understand the "after hours" thing. On the other hand it also depends on who is invited. If you're inviting spouses or significant others or you're inviting kids not really practical at all to put it during the day. And I'm not sure so many people would really want to do a work event if none of their family was ever allowed to go due to the hours.
my response would be it needs to be during work hours. Lunch time or close the office at 3 pm and set aside the rest of the work day for the dinner.
I'm the opposite. When I had work events during work time we never actually got to enjoy it. Probably the nature of the place. It was a call center. You never felt like you got any separation for work because right when something was done in the time slot you needed to get back on the phones ASAP.
Even during employee appreciation week they didn't build in any time during the day past the first year I worked there. You had two 15 mins breaks and one 30 mins lunch and because you were timed by the minute take out the several minutes back and forth to walk to and from your desk. It became a joke to do the STIP (like a profit sharing) meeting, employee appreciation week and more during work, at the office because it was just them cheapening out and not actually doing anything nice for the employees. It was more demoralizing than anything to shoe-horning it into work hours. But even if they did it after work hours the company themselves wouldn't have done well.
