Bay Area Team Building After COVID-19

Bay Area Team Building: Treating your employees to a food tour

Show your employees what they mean to you

In the current COVID-19 crisis, most businesses and most employees are at home, helping curb the spread of the pandemic. But the Bay Area is one of the most affluent and exciting places to work in the US, with vast numbers of companies operating In San Francisco, Oakland, and Silicon Valley to the south. So it’s only a matter of time before these companies get back to business as usual.

It’s a stressful time and company morale will have taken a big hit by COVID-19, and a company’s sense of togetherness and teamwork may have been impacted as well. Organizing some kind of team-building activity in the Bay Area could be a great way to reconnect as a company or just within your specific team. That’s why we’ve put together this blog: we’d like to explain why one of our East Bay food tours could be the perfect way to reconnect as a team, support local businesses, and show your employees or teammates how much they mean to you.

Why do corporate team building at all?

If you’re reading this blog, then you are maybe already sold on the huge benefits of corporate team building., Bbut for everyone else it makes sense for us to spend a little time explaining exactly why it’s so worthwhile. O2E Brands CEO Brian Scudamore makes a great argument for corporate team building in Forbes, arguing that “team building is the most important investment you’ll make” and a lot of this comes down to creating more “engaged employees” and about how it’s “good for company culture”. We’d like to add to this by saying that engagement and company culture will likely be at an all-time low by the time this pandemic runs its course, so organizing your own Bay Area team-building activity is more important than ever.

Why an Oakland food tour is a fantastic team-building activity

Some people cringe at the idea of team-building activities as they imagine the experience will be full of forced conversation with co-workers. And that might be the case for some activities, but not for a food tour. No ropes course here! Our guides do a lot of the talking (but they are also happy to answer any questions you have) and we find that this takes a lot of pressure off!

Food is also the great equalizer: it helps people find things in common and it gives everyone easy subjects to talk about. And, given that 70% of office chat is usually about the best place nearby to get lunch or whatever diet Jeff from accounting is on, we think food is one of the best things to focus a team-building activity around!

A food tour is also a treat

Treating staff to good food is one of the oldest tricks in the management handbook. While it’s an old trick, it’s still a good one. Take our original Oakland Food Tour, for example: it has six different tasting locations where guests can try the Rockridge neighborhood’s best-kept foodie secrets. This isn’t just ordering in a pizza on a Friday afternoon, this is giving staff a culinary experience. Staff will enjoy a wonderful assortment of food and they’ll be learning about their local area at the same time. And this leads us neatly on to the next vital point…

Learn about and support local businesses

Other than tourism, hospitality has arguably been hit by COVID-19 harder than any other industry. This is why taking your corporate team on a Local Food Adventure is such a great way to give money to artisanal Bay Area restaurants, breathing some life into our local food scene. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about the history of Oakland and about the Bay Area in general. This is a food tour with a generous seasoning of culture and history.

After an extended period of social distancing and self-isolation, we think it will be so important for corporate teams to connect again, to come together and enjoy local food and relax with co-workers. Our East Bay food tours offer a little something for everybody, and most of them can be altered to from a private Oakland food tour for your business. If you have any questions for us whatsoever, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We hope you’re looking after yourself, and that you’re ready for a Local Food Adventure in the East Bay Area once life gets back to normal. We can’t wait to show you around!