When you’re meeting with clients, it’s not always just a desk and paper. Sometimes, you treat your clients out for something good to eat. You treat them to coffee, tea, or a variety of other things. Depending on the time, you treat them to whatever is suitable. Especially here in the Philippines, the best ideas always come from a meal when both parties have food. It also avoids the situation when both parties come to the meeting hangry (Hungry + Angry).
But hold up! You can’t just eat anything! Asides from the whole allergies thing, there are just some foods you have to avoid otherwise it may cause problems. Here are some of the foods you should avoid.
Pasta Negra (or anything with black squid ink)
We all love Black Pasta or commonly known as the Pasta Negra. A traditional Italian dish, it uses the black squid ink to serve as a sauce for the pasta. The noodles are tossed in olive oil and black squid ink before being served with some sliced squid rings. It’s cousin, the Paella Negra, is of similar creation save it’s roasted and it uses rice. Not noodles.
While it is delicious, it’s not good to eat that in front of a client. Why? For starters, black squid ink is hard to remove when it gets on your clothes. If you’re wearing a white polo shirt, black ink will look so obvious on your immaculately clean clothes. Next, black squid ink stains your teeth. So, if you’re talking to someone, your teeth will be so black you’ll look like something straight out of a video game.
If you really want seafood for a meal, we suggest getting a meal with olive oil and lemon instead as a base for pasta sauce. That way, it’s a clear sauce and less prone to make sauce splatter stains on your top.
Anything heavy with garlic
While garlic is known for its amazing healthy properties, it has one problem: your breath will smell. Garlic’s strong flavor comes with a strong smell that can really smell up your breath. This will make it hard for you to draw your client’s attention as they’ll be focused on your bad breath. To remove that, we suggest getting some lemon tea to help remove the scent.
Shrimp and Crab
Two of the most delectable shellfish made the list. Why? This takes good dexterity and adeptness with utensils. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck using your hands. Shrimp and crab are a good luxury food. But if not cooked right, they can be a pain to deal with. Shrimp, if overcooked, is difficult to peel as the shell sticks itself to the meat. Crab if also not cooked right will require you to rip it apart with your hands.
Unless those foods come in peeled and dealt with, best not to order it. You’re trying to impress a client with your brain. Not scare them off with gluttonous behavior.
Spinach
Spinach is good for you on other days. Just not when you have to meet up with someone. After all, the fibrous texture of the Spinach may cause it to stick to your teeth. It’ll look like also you don’t clean your teeth so try to steer clear from it for the meantime. Especially, if it’s just boiled or steamed.
Drinks or Foods that cause gas
So if you know you’re lactose-intolerant, don’t drink milk or milk tea. Because only God knows how long you’re going to take in that bathroom just to flush out the milk. Some people only have mild cases of lactose intolerance but others have severe that they’re trapped in the bathroom for the next 30 minutes. Now, if your client offers you milk-based products and you know you’re lactose-intolerant, you can politely say no and just drop hints that your body can’t take it.
All for the perfect meeting
When you’re conducting a business meeting, everything has to be perfect. From impressions down to the farewells, all that to be able to negotiate properly. Don’t worry, we’ll also help you with a guide on how to speak to investors!