Business breakfast, coffee or lunch? Or even dinner?

Question

Would love to hear from you whether you have preferences for business meetings over breakfast, lunch, or coffee? I personally reserve business dinners with the closest of those in my network because I'm a morning person and also because I try to help put my young kids to bed when possible. But would love to hear from people whether they prefer to have certain kinds of business meetings over breakfast vs. lunch vs. coffee and how they think about the time commitments and relationship-levels involved in making those decisions.

Anonymous · Answer

The idea of having accomplished a business/networking meeting before 9 a.m. sounds appealing in theory... but in reality,  it's really difficult to not feel a little frenzied // distracted by the rest of your day's agenda in the morning! And I think that can negatively impact the quality of your relationship-building time, at least for me. My vote is for dinner, but I also don't have kids. So that may one day change!

Anonymous · Answer

Great question. I prefer breakfast/coffee if I'm meeting with someone I'm not very close to or someone I've never met before.  Networking isn't always easy for me, and I think it's harder for me to muster the mental energy to forge new connections after a day of work, or even over lunch in the middle of the day when I feel like it's interrupting my to-do list for the day... So I'm much more inclined to opt for a pre-work meeting. 
But if I'm having a business meeting with someone I know well, I don't have much of a time preference.

Lady Pele · Answer

I agree with Ellen.  With a client or vendor, lunch or dinner works better.  If it's a working lunch with a number of people, sometimes renting a room at a restaurant works.  We also have food delivered for working lunches at the office.

Ellen Falbo · Answer

Networking or an informal career conversation I'd go for breakfast/coffee/lunch.  Client or vendor business meeting would be more appropriate over lunch or dinner.  We have a lot of vendors or business partners who come for a meeting and then want to take us to dinner - while it is a nice thing, it is also a challenge balancing with family time- that is just the way it is thought.

Business breakfast, coffee or lunch? Or even dinner?

You're invited.

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