Kitchen can be the main place for organizing informal gatherings, and an excellent place for the next team building everyone could take part in, regardless of their age and physical fitness. Whether your employees are experienced cooks or amateurs, they are going to find this to be a very interesting activity.

Typical team building activities became over represented in a way, and maybe even anticipated.
When team building comes up in a conversation, employees already think of paintball, bowling, weekend in a spa center, etc., because they are used to doing those activities.
Therefore it is up to companies to come across original team building activities, and give their employees something they don’t expect.

Organizing team cooking

Everyone can take part, regardless of their age and physical fitness, because it requires no physical efforts, like some other team building activities.

Cooking can be both indoor and outdoor activity, depending on the number of participants and the weather conditions.

A team, or teams, get recipes for making traditional meals they have to prepare together. They have to delegate responsibilities – who does the chopping, who kneads, bakes, who fries, and so on.

This is an excellent way to see how employees function as a team, who stands out as a leader, and how much time do they need to agree on particular tasks. Participants do not need to be professionals, considering that a professional chef can supervise the cooking.

Organizing cooking as a multi-group activity can be rather interesting. For example, every group could get a recipe for preparing the same dish they would later on present to judges.

Judges could be either professional chefs or previously selected team members. Also, groups could prepare different meals, and then other groups could evaluate it. Group whose dish wins the most votes would be a winner, and win a certain award.

If the cooking is organized for just one group, members could define the concept themselves, or they could get recipes for preparing lunch or dinner for the entire group. This is a low-pressure version of the event, since there is no single winner, and it can be equally fun.

Of course, competitive mindset could be completely ruled out, and groups could prepare meals for pure fun, and enjoy them together.
Anyway, after they put in their efforts, participants will enjoy trying out traditional meals they prepared from fresh ingredients.

Ideally, they would savor these traditional meals in venues or places that are traditional for the chosen area, should the weather conditions allow. That way they could get to know both the culture and tradition of a certain destination. Besides from preparing meals, participants could also prepare zimnica (food stored for winter) or jams. Upon completion of the task, participants could bring a jar of zimnica or jam as a souvenir.

Jar sticker could contain information such as the date, name of the company or names of team members that prepared it and it would be a reminder of the wonderful time they spent together and the team work they invested.

Recipes for preparing meals can be more or less complicated.
So, if participants go to a destination in Serbia, they could prepare gibanica (multi layered pastry), pogaca with kajmak (bread with cream cheese), proja (corn bread), sarma, barbecue, apple or cherry pies etc.

If the event should take place in Croatia, participants could make manestra (vegetable stew), brudet (fish stew), sinjski arambasici, orahnjaca (walnut roll), and in Slovenia, their cooking-task could be struklji (filled pastry), potica (nut roll), prekmurska gibanica (layer cake) or sausages.

In Montenegro they could make kacamak (maize porridge), rastan, stuffed peppers or podgoricki popeci (veal dish), and in Macedonia they could cook Macedonian Goulash, turli tava (vegetable and meat stew), or Macedonian pogacha (type of bread).

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, team members could try and make tufahije (walnut-stuffed apples), kadaif (sweet noodles), bosanski lonac (vegetable and meat stew), etc.

Whether your employees are experienced cooks or amateurs, they are going to find this to be a very interesting activity.

Cooking will provide your team a chance to get to know each other better, strengthen the team spirit, and enjoy preparing and consuming local specialties they prepared.
Team members will surely have a wonderful experience they will be eager to repeat in another location, and enjoy preparing area-specific specialties.