Successful organizations are powered by strong teams that work together to achieve their goals. To be effective, teams need to feel connected to one another and be confident enough to trust each other where department expertise is concerned. Building teams like this takes intentional effort. To create efficient, cohesive teams, many companies employ outdoor kitchens for team building to strengthen employee morale and foster a sense of connection.
Team building has the potential to provide a slew of benefits to your organization, and there are many different methods and approaches. Whether this is a new concept or you’ve been doing it for a while and you’re looking for new ideas, here are some of the best reasons to include outdoor meals in your team building strategy.
Smelling pizza makes people happy
If you want your team members to feel more connected, you have to get them in the same space where they’ll feel relaxed and happy. Food – especially pizza – happens to be a secret weapon in this regard.
The sensory experience of food heightens the positive experience of any connection. However, pizza has some hidden superpowers. For example, when you cook a fresh pizza, the smell alone is enough to make people feel happy. You might expect that eating pizza would make people the happiest, but research has shown that people feel the highest level of joy when smelling pizza.
This is a powerful discovery that you can use to your advantage. All you need is an outdoor kitchen with a pizza oven either on campus or at someone’s residence that you can use while hosting team-building activities.
You can structure your events so that employees are mingling and connecting while the pizza bakes in the oven. The smell will influence their mood in a positive way, which will increase the satisfaction they feel while interacting with each other. For best results, bake several pizzas back-to-back to keep the good smells rolling.
Food brings people together
For many, sharing a meal with others is far more enjoyable than eating alone. There’s something special about sharing a meal with someone you enjoy spending time with, whether it’s at a restaurant, your home, or a backyard barbecue.
Employees who share meals together at lunchtime are going to bond more than others, but that bond will be stronger when they eat outside. But don’t count on shared lunches to carry your team to a new level of collaboration. While they will bond a bit, lunches are short and there’s always the nagging feeling of having to get back to work in a tight timeframe.
Food creates a stress-free atmosphere
Food can help you create a stress-free environment for your team building events as long as nobody is expected to be on the clock that day. Taking away the stress and pressure of having to work puts people at ease and makes their interactions more authentic.
Try to avoid scheduling an event that will force some people to leave early or not attend. You can host events in the evening after the work day ends, but some people will be too tired and will just go home. To get more people to show up, host events on a weekend.
Eating outdoors is healthy
When you host special gatherings for your team where food is cooked and eaten outdoors, they’ll have a chance to connect out in the open with fresh air, which greatly contributes to the bonding experience.
Food can encourage cooking together
Most companies host events where teams eat together, but with an outdoor kitchen, your team members can also cook together. This just adds another layer of teamwork that involves problem-solving and creativity. If you want to get fancy, you can host cooking contests where people pair up and have to cook a meal with a set number of ingredients, and the person who makes the best dish wins.
Outdoor meals are ideal for all types of events
You don’t always need to host an event specifically for team building because any event where people gather can produce the same effects. When you have an outdoor kitchen onsite, you can host birthday parties, company picnics, employee appreciation events, retirement parties, and other types of celebrations with food. All of these gatherings can contribute to a stronger sense of connection and increased employee morale and satisfaction.
If you haven’t included food in your team building activities, now is the perfect time. Food is the ultimate bonding tool, and the more connected your team members are, the greater the contributions they’ll make to your company.
