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Food

Most venues make their money off of food sales by requiring you to use their vendor or themselves. Depending on the venue, the food organizer may be the same as the venue organizer. If there is a separate food organizer, work closely with the venue lead to make sure everyone gets fed. At our current venue, TCEA, we are allowed to choose whatever food vendors we want without any tax / charge by the venue.

Role description

Your job is to make sure that the attendees get two square meals and an afternoon snack each day. Coffee is a bonus.

General Tasks

  • Setup breakfast for day 1 and day 2
  • Setup lunch for Day 1 and day 2
  • Setup afternoon snack break for day 1 and day 2
  • Setup a coffee vendor for day 1 and day 2
  • Setup beverage service for day 1 and day 2

Notes on Food

  • Self-serivce grab-and-go food is the most efficient way to do it. In years past we either served meals or had attendees serve themselves buffet style. This meant that lunch and breakfast could take up to two hours based on attendee count. By having boxed or pre-packaged meals you save time that can be used for more talks or open spaces. In order to reduce food waste, box meals should be 'unboxed'. Central Market Catering on South Lamar knows how to do this for the TCEA Conference Center.
  • The general rule of thumb for vegan / gluten free options is 20% of the total headcount. Make sure that those meals are segregated away so that they aren't grabbed by mistake. This happened in 2022. Have a volunteer stationed with the restricted meal option and check them off a list generated by the registration organizer.
  • You are feeding everyone, including volunteers, organizers, sponsors, and attendees. Make sure to use the total headcount for planning. Be careful of your estimated attendance.

3 Months Out

  • Determine what vendor you need to go with for food for breakfast, lunch, snack, and coffee.
  • If you are using an outside vendor, get at least three quotes for each meal. Breakfast tacos in the morning are always a hit. Sandwiches from Central Market are a great lunch option.

2 Months Out

  • Get a contract signed with your food vendors. They usually need at least two months of lead time to get things in order.

Two Weeks Before

  • Check in with the food vendor and make any last-minute adjustments. I.e. if the attendee count is low scale back the amount of food.
  • Get a Certificate of Insurance (COI) for any food vendor that will be setting up on site; delivery food vendors do not need to supply a COI. The minimum coverage required is a combined single limit of $1,000,000 per occurrence and a minimum aggregate of $1,000,000 It must have the following language added:

In the description section: "TCEA is included as additional insured where required by written contract for DeveopsDays Austin | MM-DD-YYYY - MM-DD-YYYY"

In the certificate holder section: TCEA Conference Center 3100 Alvin Devane Blvd. Building B Austin, TX 78741

The Day Before

  • If hiring an outside vendor, get the information on when they'll arrive. Arrange for drop off and placing the food. You'll want the food to arrive at least thirty minutes before meal time in order to get everything setup.
  • Make room on your credit card. You need to have enough credit to handle all the food vendors charging you at once. If you need to use multiple cards, plan to do so.

The Day Of

  • Make sure that food is delivered on time and in the right locations.
  • If there is any excess food, gather it up in the afternoon and take it to the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH).
  • Police the food area to make sure that empty containers are removed and keep the selection fresh and topped off.

Notes on Current Venue - Texas Computer Education Associate (TCEA)

The TCEA is a non-profit that works primarily with educators to provide support for computer based education. The venue allows us to use our own food vendors for breakfast, lunch, snack, and coffee service. The venue can provide daily beverage service including water, iced tea, and soft drinks.

For 2025, we went with Tacodeli for breakfast tacos, Central Market for "unboxed" boxed sandwich lunches, and Tiff's Treats food truck for afternoon snacks. We used Doxa Coffee Roastersas our coffee vendor. The venue doesn't have outside power or water hookups for food trucks, so make sure that food trucks can provide their own power and water. Some ideas we've had are contracting with several food trucks for lunch to give people more options. However, keep in mind that you may need to add more time to the lunch schedule if you do so. One more important fact about the venue: they really prefer to minimize food waste, so having 'unboxed' meals is the what they want; Central Market knows how to make that happen.