Looking for virtual team building activities with food?
Remote working is an excellent option for your business and for good reason. It increases productivity as your workers work from the comfort of a place of their liking. Additionally, there’s a sense of flexibility. After all, what is more fun than having extra coins from your usual earnings?
The challenge used to come when you want teamwork and collaboration. But this is not the case these days. Thanks to modern technology, virtual team building is as viable as physical team building.
Moreover, virtual team building activities will not cost you as much as physical team building. Also, it leaves you with endless options to choose from, whether it’s games or food.
One thing is a guarantee: your team will enjoy and have fun. Here’s a list of virtual team-building activities with food to consider in 2022.
1. An Online Cooking Competition
Think of typical cooking challenges that you could engage in to turn up the heat in your usual social circles. Now think about organizing a friendly cooking competition where you spend time with teleworkers. It will be a virtual team-building activity that offers a learning experience for your team.
It does not mean that because everyone works virtually at home, the competition will be boring. You could have all the online pasta wars, cupcake challenges, and sushi showdowns you want. You can break into smaller teams in an online cooking competition where individual cookery creation counts in the overall team’s score.
That way, it encourages the teams to cheer their members, helping one another throughout the competitions. You could award prizes for winners, and the host chef will be the judge for an expert opinion and remove bias.
2. Virtual Recipe Swaps
Everyone can play this fun group cooking game. In this team-building event, everyone contributes a family recipe making a spreadsheet. Each team member can pick or be assigned a recipe randomly. Each recipe is affordable and beginner-friendly.
Then, you will pick a day where your team could show their creation. The one who shared the recipe will rate your cooking. These recipes encourage the team to learn new random skills and promote team bonding. How? Your group can learn more about each other’s lifestyle, culture, and background.
3. Virtual Wine Tasting
A connoisseur is a taste expert. Wine comes in a variety of states. Thus, you could become a wine connoisseur with your teammates instead of drinking casually. Your team will understand the technique, details, and art of tasting wines here.
Hiring an expert who will take your team through the process offers a lot of fun. The expert will help you learn about the body, its acidity, and the complimentary food that would go well when paired with wine.
Thus, you could send wine bottles ahead if they allow it. You could also make a list and send it out to them to buy it. You can then have them sip the wine together virtually as they share their experience and impression. An expert bartender could determine who made an excellent sommelier.
4. A Food Tower
A food tower is more like Jenga but with food instead of the small wood blocks. Here, you split your team into small remote groups that are not necessarily in the same place. Ensure that each section has equal amounts of food to build a food tower.
Excellent food ideas include marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti, and fruits like apples. You cannot use masking tape, glue, or strings in a food tower. You will use one hand to build, and the one whose building crumbles first loses the game.
This game fosters remote team building, and generates a very refreshing experience. Moreover, it’s among those virtual events that are fun and frolic, and enable the team to have strategic thinking so that they do not crumble their food tower and have the tallest building.
5. Having an Online Cooking Class
Think about hiring expert chefs around the globe like Gordon Ramsey? Though it requires a lot of technicalities to have one cooking class with them, think of the possible outcomes you could have by a one-time cooking class.
The good news is, you can meet them virtually and have a fun cooking class with your team. Furthermore, this process will not take much time or cost. Interacting with such an expert chef gives your team pride and motivation. At the class’ end, every member could show their creation.
What’s more, there is one person who always makes the best dishes in a team. You could have a virtual team meeting with them. Then, they can share their cooking ideas with the entire team.
In a virtual cooking class, you could ask them any questions. For instance, do you always burn food? Or, why your food always tends to have a specific taste.
Learning and trying to implement a new cooking technique brings a ton of positive energy, which your team could use at work.
6. Having Virtual Skills-Based Online Class
A skills-based online class focuses on teaching your members some technical cookeries. Again you could hire a professional chef who will teach some elementary culinary knowledge leaving them ready for specialized cooking. Here, your team learns vital skills like timing and adherence to instruction.
Remember, in virtual working, you have limited supervision. So, what you bank on mostly is your teams’ ability to take notes on instructions. And yes, your team could always call for clarity. But with accuracy in getting instructions, you could spare and increase productivity.
Having a virtual skills-based class helps your team have valuable organizational, precision, and balancing skills. Tons of fun is toward the end, where everyone shows off and talks about their takeaways from the cooking class.
7. Making Bentos Virtually
Making bentos is where you arrange or pack homemade meals into an appealing outlook. The making process is fun, but even more fun is when you eat your bento. You, therefore, give each team member a chance to show their creativity.
This game requires more food than the food tower. Additionally, making bentos may become messy, but you could always eat your bento afterward. Therefore, in each team member’s sweet spot, you could arrange for a bento making challenge.
You can have open suggestions or choose specific theme colors. The good thing about bentos is that you can always use the foods of your choice as you are not limited to certain foods. Again, you can award the team member with the most appealing bentos.
8. Meet Up for Online Coffee
You could meet up over homemade coffee in the morning before starting your work. You will have a good time bonding with your colleagues and have enough time to discuss your plans. Also, having morning coffee helps pick up the weak team members by involving them in problem-solving discussions.
Other virtual coffee meetups include having your team engaged in coffee tasting. It is pretty much similar to an online wine rating. You could hire a talented barista to share their technique for a perfect homemade brew.
Here, they can learn to use AeroPress, expresso, and lattes. An online coffee meeting is a to-go-for activity for a morning team virtual team-building meeting.
9. The Kitchen Virtual Meeting
You can take your team members through your kitchen during their happy hours. You could also have them take the rest of the team through their kitchens. Besides, you can host your video conference as you teach your team to prepare a particular dish. Moreover, your team could agree to use the kitchen as a virtual escape room as remote work can be daunting at times.
This meeting helps break the typical meeting protocol and allows room for fun and bonding. After your session, you could host a virtual dinner. But here, your team will also need to cook as you talk. It requires adequate preparation. All the same, it is a fun activity you do not want to miss.
There’s a way your team meeting could be more fun even over the digital platforms. Your team’s overall happiness does not need to come from physical events, as online events make a great option.
Along with other fun virtual activities like a virtual campfire or a virtual scavenger hunt, you could use these food-centered activities for team bonding, whether your team is global or local. You do not have to meet physically as these virtual team-building exercises are equally efficient.
