It’s Thursday of a very long week. Your team has powered through delivering the first draft of a 150-page financial report. The deadline for the final pass is coming in two weeks. But already, you can sense team members becoming tired, and needing a safe distance from the manuscript to be able to see it with clearer, fresher eyes. What’s one thing that you could do for them to keep them fired up? A culinary team building is just want you need!
Culinary team building is gaining ground in Singapore. As an alternative to the usual team building activities where obstacle course relays or rope pulling and other physically intense activities tend to be the main features, culinary team building activities engage staff and team members in learning core principles, concepts and skills like leadership, innovation, creativity, efficiency, team work, effective communications, among others with food as the common language.
According to the American Society for Training Development Alexandria, Virginia, team building events have changed in recent years to include more creative and cerebral undertakings. “The fact these activities are colourful and different often makes them suspect and controversial, but they can be perfectly legitimate if they achieve a strategic business objective,” said Patricia A. Galagan, vice president for content at the society, as quoted in this New York Times article.
Culinary team building events in Singapore have gained mainstream attention in recent years, where specific staff development objectives are met while having them participate in food or cooking-related challenges.


How does a culinary team building achieve business objectives and generate insights from the team which could be valuable for management?
First, cooking requires planning, organising, budgeting, and working together to come up with a dish that is on point and sells to a target audience. Culinary team building activities can help harness these same management and leadership skills that are relevant in the workplace.
Second, a culinary team building event can be a great equalizer. Everyone needs to eat. And food is a common connector. Especially if a company has culturally diverse teams, eating and enjoying food are familiar experiences shared by all, and foster trust-building, and stronger team cohesion.
Third, cooking is as fun as it is challenging. To the uninitiated, cooking can push people outside of their comfort zones. It can create the ideal setting for people to try something new that scares them. For those that have experience in the kitchen, a cooking team building can both be de-stressing, and it can also spark the imagination. The kitchen can be a playground and a laboratory to create new dishes or to reinvent old ones.
Fourth, a cooking team building teaches life skills. At one point in a person’s life, he or she may have to learn how to cook either for him or herself or for others. Learning how to slice a carrot properly, how to cut up meat so that not a single part gets thrown away, and how to choose an ingredient are precious life skills that could unlock benefits to last a lifetime, in terms of good health and having fun eating!
Why should companies invest in team building events?
Team building is an important aspect of taking care of employees’ welfare. According to the World Economic Forum, looking after employees’ mental health makes good business sense. It is an investment with guaranteed financial returns. Employees whose mental welfare is looked after perform and deliver results better, according to the WEF study. Thus, it is important for employers to find ways to take care of their employees’ mental and emotional welfare, especially during the pandemic when employees struggled with a Work from Home set up, and to do so while juggling domestic duties.
Palate Sensations Team Building understands that today’s workforce is confronted with a myriad of challenges. Our culinary team building events have the team members’ welfare at heart, and also harness the team’s strength to achieve business goals and objectives.
Facilitated in our spacious and well-appointed 2000-sq ft studio, we can deliver culinary team building events in Singapore for hundreds of employees. We have delivered successful culinary team building events to various companies to great fun, learning, and laughter.
Contact us today to book a culinary team building for your work teams!