Corporate catering in London is increasingly placed through marketplace platforms that aggregate multiple caterers into a single ordering interface. City Pantry, Feedr, Just Eat for Business and others offer convenience: one login, one invoice flow, many suppliers. For occasional one-off orders they can be useful. For regular team lunches where the caterer relationship matters, ordering direct from the caterer typically delivers better value, better food, and a better working relationship.
Vanda's Kitchen supplies daily team lunches direct to London offices from our EC4 kitchen. Certified halal, 100% nut-free, stocked in Selfridges Food Hall, 5-star food hygiene. Many of our clients came to us via platforms and then moved to a direct relationship. This piece explains why, so that office managers considering the choice can make an informed decision. View our team lunch options.
What platforms take from the price
Marketplace platforms do not operate on fresh air. Their fees — typically 12-20% of the order value, sometimes more — come out of either the caterer's margin or the customer's price. In practice, most caterers selling through platforms price their menus to absorb the fee, which means customers pay the platform's commission either explicitly (as a separate charge) or implicitly (built into higher menu prices than the same caterer charges direct).
For a team of 20 ordering £400 of lunch twice a week — a typical London corporate catering spend — the platform fee represents roughly £80-160 per week, or £4,000-8,000 per year, going to the intermediary rather than to the food. For organisations where the catering spend justifies the attention, moving to a direct arrangement with the caterer captures that margin as either lower cost or better food for the same cost. Both outcomes are preferable to giving it to the platform.
Platform convenience has a real value for some use cases — occasional orders, new caterers being trialled, organisations without a preferred supplier. For established relationships with a caterer that is delivering what you want, the case for continuing to route via a platform is thinner.
The service difference
Beyond pricing, the direct relationship is structurally different. When you order direct, you speak to the business that is cooking and delivering the food. Menu questions, allergen queries, delivery specifics, problems when they arise — all go to the people who can actually resolve them, immediately. Platform orders route through a customer service layer that may or may not reach the kitchen in time to fix an issue with tomorrow's delivery.
For regular catering relationships, this matters. A good caterer gets to know the team over time: which days run bigger, who has the nut allergy, what format the CEO prefers for Friday demos, how to handle the quiet week when half the team is on leave. That institutional memory accrues in a direct relationship and is reset every time a platform order places you in the queue alongside every other customer of every other caterer on the system.
The same applies to flexibility. "Can you do an extra six portions for the meeting that was just added at 11am" — from a direct caterer who knows your office, the answer is usually yes. Through a platform, the answer is usually the platform's procedural response rather than the caterer's judgement.
What a direct relationship with Vanda's looks like
We work with corporate clients on direct arrangements that include a single contact person, agreed delivery windows, consolidated invoicing (weekly or monthly), and pre-agreed pricing. For regular catering, we set up standing orders that reduce the weekly admin to a brief confirmation. Read our standing orders guide for the detail on how weekly arrangements work.
Menu access is the same range available on our site — the full catering shop, team lunch builder, and custom catering conversations for specific events. Allergen handling is robust because the kitchen is structurally set up for it: we are fully halal and fully nut-free, so these are not flags on individual menu items but facts about the kitchen. See our allergen matrix for full detail.
When a platform still makes sense
This is not an argument that platforms never serve a purpose. For one-off orders, for organisations exploring caterers, for large events where comparing three or four suppliers through a single interface saves time — platforms have a clear use case. For organisations where catering procurement is centralised and routed through approved vendor systems, platforms may simply be the operational reality.
The question is whether, for your specific use case, the platform's fee is earning its keep. For organisations with a steady catering pattern and a preferred supplier, it usually is not.
Moving from a platform to a direct arrangement
The mechanical steps are straightforward. Set up a corporate account with the caterer — see our corporate accounts page. Provide billing details and any PO requirements. Agree delivery windows and standard formats. Switch your next order to the direct channel. Keep the platform account for contingencies but stop defaulting to it.
Most of our regular clients made this transition once and never went back. The pricing and service advantages are immediate; the caterer relationship builds over subsequent orders.
Getting started
We deliver across central London from our EC4 base — City, Westminster, King's Cross, Shoreditch, Canary Wharf. Minimum order £100, standard notice 24 hours for most formats. Corporate invoice accounts are available. To start a direct arrangement: WhatsApp us, send an enquiry, or view our team lunch options.
About Vanda's Kitchen
Vanda's Kitchen is an independent food business near St Paul's Cathedral EC4, stocked in Selfridges Food Hall and delivering certified halal, 100% nut-free, freshly prepared catering across London. Our kitchen holds a 5-star food hygiene rating and every item carries full Natasha's Law allergen labelling. Halal certification is independently verified by the Halal Friendly List. For organisations with regular corporate catering spend, a direct relationship with the caterer captures the platform margin as either cost savings or better food. WhatsApp us, send an enquiry, or view team lunch options.