Seattle Team Building Cooking & Happy Hour

Your office works. We take over a conference room, a cafeteria or an open floor anywhere from downtown Seattle to Bellevue and Redmond, and the chef arrives with all the ingredients, supplies and equipment, so no commercial kitchen is needed. If your building won’t allow cooking, Charcuterie & Connection, Mixology & Mingle and Sipping & Socializing involve no heat at all, and the Seattle BBQ Bash brings the chefs and the grill to your workplace instead. If you would rather get people out of the building, your coordinator arranges a nearby venue sized to your group.

Yes. Rockoly runs virtual and hybrid events alongside in-person ones, so the room in Bellevue or downtown cooks together while remote teammates cook the same menu at home from a kit shipped to them, with a Zoom host keeping both halves in one conversation. Kits ship free within the US, and ingredients are delivered internationally too — Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany and more — so a distant colleague isn’t stuck watching. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and WebEx all work if Zoom isn’t what your company runs on. Headcount flexes in both directions: 3 people up to 600 and beyond, with the biggest groups split by team or across days.

Teriyaki, and it is more of a Seattle dish than most people here realize. In 1976 Toshihiko Kasahara opened Toshi's Teriyaki near Seattle Center and sold one thing: chicken thigh over rice under a sweet soy glaze, cheap and fast. Cooks who trained with him opened their own shops, those cooks trained others, and within a couple of decades there were hundreds of teriyaki counters across the region. Seattle-style teriyaki — the thigh, the glaze, the scoop of rice, the small green salad on the side — is a local invention rather than an import, and no other American city eats it the way this one does. It is a good thing for a chef to be explaining while your team works. Rolling & Bonding is the Japanese menu here, where the first real lesson is seasoning and spreading sushi rice without crushing it, and chicken teriyaki is one of the mains you can add to it.

No, because nobody is being tested. Each step is demonstrated first, the chef circulates while you work, and event helpers pick up any station that has fallen behind. The tasks are small and shared, so no one is left alone with a knife and a recipe, and the menus here were chosen because a beginner can finish them in one session — cavatelli, maki rolls, a charcuterie board. Anyone who would rather not handle food can plate, taste or judge instead, and everyone eats.

In the room: a chef or mixologist leading the session and coaching each station, event helpers who prep the ingredients and build the stations, and a crew that sets the space up before anyone arrives and puts it back afterwards. Catering staff join when your menu adds a buffet or a main course. The whole thing runs about two hours, first appetizer to last dish washed, and event insurance is part of every package. Behind both halves is your dedicated event coordinator, who settles menu, timing, venue and dietary requirements with you in advance and stays your single point of contact throughout. On a hybrid booking they are also the person making sure the remote half is not an afterthought: kits shipped to home addresses, a host keeping on-screen guests in the conversation, and the chef's camera framed so the people in Bellevue and the people at home are watching the same hands.

It can, but the room sets the clock. The chef is cooking downtown or in Bellevue for a fixed two hours, and everyone joining live is on Seattle time — comfortable for teammates on the East Coast, much less so for anyone in Europe or Asia. Tell your coordinator where your people actually are when you book and you’ll get an honest answer about which start times work for whom. When the spread is too wide for one start time to fix, ask about running it twice: the in-person event for the Seattle room, and the same menu again as a virtual session at an hour that works in Europe or Asia, with a kit shipped to each address. Large groups get divided that way regardless — by team or across days — and it usually makes both events better, because a smaller group gets more of the chef.

Your per-person rate is set by the menu and the headcount, and it covers everything the event needs: Live instruction from your chef. All ingredients, supplies and equipment. Setup and cleanup by the Rockoly team. Extra food and drinks, so no one leaves hungry. A dedicated event coordinator, plus free customizations. Event insurance. Customizing costs nothing: mix two menus, adjust dishes, or add the Haiku Challenge to the sushi workshop. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher and no-alcohol are accommodated at no extra charge when you tell us ahead of time. Only named extras add to the bill — custom aprons at $40 per person, a sake tasting, chicken teriyaki as a main, mochi for dessert. Send your date and headcount through the form on this page and you’ll get a firm number back.

Three weeks for a cooking event, four for a happy hour. If you are running this as a hybrid — the Bellevue or downtown room cooking with the chef while remote teammates cook the same menu at home — count from the shipping, not the chef, because the kits have to reach every address before the day. That is the deadline that actually moves. Rush dates are sometimes possible when a chef has the day free, so ask before ruling out a close one. A deposit holds the slot, by credit card, ACH transfer or check, and cancelling at least 48 hours before the start, or within 24 hours of purchase, is refunded in full. The inquiry form on this page is the fastest start; events@rockoly.com and (617) 939-9732 reach the same planners. Every Seattle event comes with the Love Your Event Guarantee: if it doesn't live up to expectations, we'll make it right.