Anyone who has ever been responsible for ordering lunch for an office meeting knows the assignment sounds easier than it actually is. Someone wants turkey. Someone else wants chicken. One person is vegetarian. Another needs gluten-free. The meeting starts at noon, the food needs to arrive before then, and nobody wants to spend the first 20 minutes sorting through sandwiches trying to determine which lunch belongs to whom.

That everyday workplace problem is exactly the niche Greater Glendale Chamber of Commerce member Apple Spice Catering has built its business around. The Denver-area Apple Spice, located at 7346 S. Alton Way in Centennial, specializes in corporate catering, boxed lunches, breakfasts, and hot meals delivered to offices and events throughout the metro area. The operation lists Erin Johnston as its catering specialist.

And while the name Apple Spice may sound like a bakery or dessert shop, its bread may actually provide a better clue to what has made the company distinctive. Apple Spice makes its bread from scratch daily, carrying on a tradition that goes back to the company’s beginnings nearly four decades ago.

It Started With A Baker

The Apple Spice story dates back to 1988, when founders Randy Clegg and Wayne Curtis rented a storefront from an 88-year-old Salt Lake City baker named Fritz Haertel. Haertel, who was known locally as the “Rye King,” had downsized his bakery but continued spending time around the ovens and mixing bowls, passing along baking knowledge to the new business owners. According to the company, he also emphasized hard work, honesty, and giving back to the community.

Nearly four decades later, Apple Spice has grown from that single location into a national catering company. But one tradition from those early bakery days remains: the bread is still made from scratch each day rather than relying on par-baked loaves shipped into the stores. At the Denver operation, that means fresh bread used for sandwiches and boxed lunches.

It is a seemingly small detail that helps distinguish Apple Spice in an increasingly crowded corporate catering market. For a company whose business revolves around sandwiches, making the bread itself gives Apple Spice an opportunity to differentiate something customers might otherwise take for granted.

The Box Lunch Is Still King

Corporate catering has changed considerably since Apple Spice opened in 1988, but the humble box lunch remains one of the simplest ways to feed a room full of people. Apple Spice has taken that concept and made it a central part of its business, offering boxed lunches with sandwiches or wraps, sides, and freshly baked cookies. For larger business orders, individual meals can also be labeled, helping eliminate the familiar conference-room ritual of opening boxes to figure out who ordered what.

The Denver menu offers considerably more than sandwiches. Apple Spice provides breakfast catering, sandwich spreads, salads, and hot-food catering, allowing the company to handle everything from an early-morning staff meeting to an employee luncheon, training session, or larger corporate event. Dietary restrictions have also become a routine part of ordering food for groups, and Apple Spice offers choices designed to accommodate a variety of dietary needs.

Catering To The Business Community

Apple Spice’s focus on offices makes it a natural fit within the Greater Glendale Chamber business community. Rather than operating primarily as a sit-down restaurant and treating catering as a secondary business, Apple Spice was built around preparing and delivering food for groups. That requires understanding a different set of customer expectations, particularly when it comes to timing, organization, and getting complicated orders right.

For a restaurant, a meal arriving at a table five minutes later than expected may not matter much. For a caterer feeding 40 people whose meeting begins at noon, those five minutes can matter considerably more. Apple Spice emphasizes reliability and order accuracy as part of its corporate catering model and handles gatherings ranging from relatively small office meetings to larger events. Individually packaged meals are also available when a group needs them.

The Denver location can accommodate some same-day orders, although advance notice is preferred because availability can vary and larger orders require additional preparation. Catering delivery may also be available outside normal business hours depending on the order and scheduling.

Don’t Forget The Cookie

There is one other Apple Spice tradition that has survived the company’s growth: the cookie. A freshly baked cookie accompanies its traditional boxed lunches, adding a simple finishing touch to a meal designed primarily around convenience and reliability.

That detail also helps explain the Apple Spice formula. The company isn’t trying to reinvent lunch. Instead, it has spent decades concentrating on the details involved in getting a lot of lunches made, packaged, identified, and delivered to the right place at the right time, while still making the food feel a little less like something that simply came out of a box.

For businesses throughout Glendale and the Denver metropolitan area, that can be particularly useful when the conference room is full, the presentation is about to begin, and someone suddenly remembers that dozens of people need to be fed. Greater Glendale Chamber member Apple Spice has built its business around making that part of the meeting considerably easier.

Apple Spice Denver is located at 7346 S. Alton Way, Suite 10-G, Centennial. The company offers pickup and catering delivery and can be reached at 720-482-2775. Additional information and menus are available at AppleSpice.com.