Book catering for an event or meeting
This task explains how to book catering for your event through the UCL hospitality site. You can order hot and cold food and drink from their menus. Dairy and gluten free options are available and menus can be customised with enough notice. All food orders require a five-day lead in time.
Before you start
You’ll need to give:
Three working days – Drinks orders.
Five working days – Food orders.
The hospitality team may be able to accommodate last minute requests, but not all menus will be available at short notice. Contact the team for more advice: (+44) 20 7679 2153
To order catering, you'll need:
- approval from your budget holder;
- a valid PTAE code (your budget holder will be able to give you the code);
- the name of your event;
- the times you want catering delivered and picked up (catering start time and end times); and
- the building and room you need catering for.
Be aware:
- You must have read the Terms and Conditions.
- Prices exclude VAT.
- Hot food is only available for selected locations.
- Gather&Gather does not arrange tables – contact the Porters to request help with moving tables, or see the room bookings guidance for reserving a suitable room. While many rooms are bookable 'centrally' some rooms in faculty buildings are reserved locally.
Contact the hospitality team on 0207 679 2153 if you have queries related to:
- Allergens
- Bespoke hospitality
- 1. Log into the UCL Hospitality site
Follow the instructions below to log into the site. If you’ve never used the site before, you’ll need to register.
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Log into or register with the UCL Hospitality site.
Your UCL Hospitality account is separate from your UCL user account and requires separate login details.
- 2. Select the correct menu for your order
Different locations have different menus to choose from. You'll need to pick the right menu for your location.
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Click on ‘Menus’ and choose the appropriate menu from the ‘Location’ drop-down, on the left-hand side.
The ‘Bloomsbury Delivered Services’ menu covers most UCL buildings, but you may need one of the menus below instead:
- Pharmacy Hospitality
- Wolfson Hospitality
- ICH Hospitality
- Bloomsbury Serviced Events (choose this if you need a serviced event).
- 3. Add your event details
Click ‘Place order’ and fill in all your event details.
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Add your event details, including:
- The number of service times you need – e.g. if you have an all-day event and need a delivery in the morning and one in the afternoon, select ‘2’.
- The building and room.
- Any special comments – such as specific dietary requirements, an addition of beer, a salad bowl.
- Email addresses of anyone who needs to be copied into the order – add this to the CC field, separating the email addresses by semi colons e.g. cceaxxx@ucl.ac.uk; ccelxxx@ucl.ac.uk
Make sure you tick the box that says ‘Room’ so you can select the room you want hospitality to deliver to.
Click ‘Create event’ to move onto the next step.
If you cannot find the building you’re looking for
Check the other menus by logging out and in again and choosing one from the ‘Locations’ drop-down. If you still cannot find your building, contact the hospitality team to check whether they serve that building. Call 0207 679 2153 or email uclhospitality@gatherandgather.com, 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.
If you cannot find the room you’re looking for
If you cannot find the room you’re looking for in the drop-down list that appears, add the name of the room to the ‘Special Comments’ field.
Serviced events
If you need proper crockery for an event, specify this in the 'Special Comments' field. Melamine crockery is used for serviced events in all buildings except:
- Wilkins building
- The Institute of Child Health
- The Wolfson Centre
- The School of Pharmacy
These buildings use proper crockery.
- 4. Add food and drinks to you order
Choose the items and quantities you want to add to your order.
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If you have more than one service time, you’ll need to specify which order you want to add food and drinks to before adding your items. Click on the service time drop-down menu to select a time slot. You’ll find this just above the list of food/drinks items.
- Click on the trolley icon to add items to your order.
- Select another service time and add items (if relevant).
- Click ‘Checkout’ to process your order.
- 5. Add the Project, Task, Award and Expenditure (PTAE) code
The system will prompt you add the PTAE code. If you do not know the code, you can ask your budget holder.
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The first time you make an order, it will save the PTAE code to your ‘wallet’ on the system. After that, you’ll be able to use the code in your wallet for any order.
You'll need to get the PTA code from your budget holder. The Expenditure (E) code for food and drink is 22151.
Add the PTAE code and click ‘submit’. This will take you to a new page.
Associated links
- 6. Finalise your order
You’ll need to finalise your order.
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- You’ll see the list of items in your order.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click ‘submit’ again. This will send an automatic email to your account, confirming your order as ‘tentative’.
- You’ll then need to wait for a final email stating that the order has been approved by the hospitality team.
If you do not receive an initial confirmation email
This means your order has not gone through. Log back into the site where you’ll see your order in progress. Then go through the final steps again.
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