What is in a French meal tray
A plateau repas is a complete meal in a single sealed tray: a starter, a main course, a portion of cheese and a dessert, with bread, cutlery and a napkin included. It is a proper lunch, not a sandwich with a packet of crisps next to it.
The main course comes in meat, fish and vegetarian versions, chosen tray by tray rather than as a single decision for the whole group. That is the format's real advantage: everybody gets what they eat, and nobody is negotiating over the last vegetarian portion at a buffet.
Trays are counted exactly, one per guest, with no margin. There is no buffet effect to absorb, which also means there is nothing left over. A group that grows by three on the morning needs three more trays, and that is a 24-hour decision rather than a same-day one.
When trays beat a buffet
When the agenda gives you forty-five minutes or less. A buffet for forty people needs about fifteen minutes of queue before anybody has started eating; trays are distributed in three.
When the room has no space for a serving table. Small Paris meeting rooms routinely have no surface beyond the table people are working at, and a buffet pushed into a corridor is worse than no buffet.
When the session might overrun. Trays hold, they are sealed, and they are still perfectly good forty minutes after the session that was supposed to end at 12:30 actually ends. A buffet in the same situation degrades visibly.
When the group is spread across floors or rooms. Trays travel; a buffet does not.
Send us the headcount and the dietary requirements by name, and we will deliver trays ready to hand out.
Order meal trays →Handling dietary requirements
Collect requirements by name, not as a count. Four vegetarian trays delivered to a room of thirty are taken by the first four people who like the look of them unless each tray carries a name.
Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and pork-free variants are available at no extra charge; halal is a menu in its own right, priced as such. What they need is notice: they are composed as part of the order rather than substituted on the morning.
Label severe allergies explicitly when you order rather than mentioning them on the day. Traces cannot be excluded in a shared preparation environment, and a guest with a severe allergy needs to know that in advance rather than at the table.
Logistics and timing
Delivery lands fifteen to thirty minutes before service, which is less than a buffet needs. Trays are distributed rather than laid out, so the set-up is quick and quiet.
Keep them cool if the gap is longer than two hours. A meeting room in full summer sun is not a holding environment, and the corridor is usually cooler than the room the meeting is in.
Order 24 hours ahead. From one hundred trays, allow 48 hours, then three days from five hundred, four from a thousand, five at two thousand and a week beyond, mostly because of the delivery slot rather than the production.
Budget
Plan on €27.40 to €53.50 per tray depending on the level of the menu, complete with starter, main, cheese, dessert, bread and cutlery. Drinks are ordered separately, and water at minimum should always be on the list.
Against a buffet at a similar level, trays land slightly higher per guest and have no waste. For a group under twenty, they are often the cheaper option in practice because a buffet for fifteen still needs the same number of dishes as a buffet for twenty-five.
Remember the €300 minimum order. Eight trays at €33.50 is €268, which sits below it. Adding drinks or the morning's coffee break clears the threshold with things you actually need.