Good Food, No Fuss, with Johnna French

Johnna French, the food and lifestyle influencer behind Johnna Knows Good Food, shares practical and budget-friendly tips for planning memorable office holiday parties without the stress. From creating cost-effective menus using versatile ingredients and frozen foods to organizing potlucks with shared planning tools, French explains how businesses can host successful workplace celebrations that accommodate dietary preferences, encourage team engagement, and minimize waste. She also offers advice on food presentation, office-friendly finger foods, mocktail ideas, and creative holiday drink stations, while emphasizing the importance of simplicity, delegation, and fostering meaningful connections among coworkers. Packed with holiday entertaining ideas, office party planning strategies, budget-conscious recipes, and workplace event tips, this episode is a can’t-miss for business leaders, office managers, HR professionals, and anyone organizing a successful holiday gathering.

About Johnna:

Johnna French is a food and lifestyle influencer, and the owner of Johnna Knows Good Food.

Learn more at JohnnaKnowsGoodFood.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Holidays are right around the corner. You might be planning an office get together or two or three for your business, and so today we’ve invited food and lifestyle influencer Johnna French on the show to give us some tips on how to make sure our office party stands out without stressing us out. Johnna, welcome!

Johnna French
Thank you so much for having me. This is one of those fun times of year where everyone can just get together and enjoy themselves and fellowship with their colleagues. And I want to make it low pressure, super easy for you. Take the easy route. This is where you take the easy path. You know, at work, it’s usually like you know, stand up to the challenge. This is not the time.

Host
That’s exactly what we want. So we’re glad you said that. Okay, so holiday get-togethers. Of course, we want to have a great time, but we all are working with a business budget here. What are some of your tips for preparing holiday recipes that also help with budget?

Johnna French
Yeah, so budgeting. You want something that will go a long way. One of my favorite things to do is like picking up something that I can use for multiple things, it stretches a long way. You want something that has multiple purposes. Anything that is a dip, a dipper, or like I said, you know, something that you can put on top of, like you can put it on top of the salad. Salad toppings and those materials go a long way as well because you know vegetables are versatile. You can use them on a crudité platter as well as putting it out for the salad. You can also put it in a pasta salad. So something, you know, bell pepper, one bell pepper can bring you a long way. You know, so you know you want to use something like that. I also love, like I said, anything that’s like super easy to just pop in the microwave, oven, whatever. This is, like I said, the time to you want to fellowship with your colleagues. You want to make it easy, and also encourage people to you know don’t do not get scared of the frozen aisle. There’s nothing wrong with it. This is not a time for you know your gourmet meal. This this is really just so you can, you know, nosh on something while you’re talking to your colleagues and you know getting together, and that should really be the focus. The food is, you know, food is kind of secondary. It’s really about communing with your coworkers. Anything pre-made is your friend because you, you know, you’re a lot of times you’re trying to get, you know, stuff to the office and also pre-made stuff and frozen things-they tend to stand up well to being carried. You know, a lot of times people are commuting a distance to get to their office. These things can stand up to you know that time and and that you’re trying to get to wherever you’re going. And also when you get to the office, you know, a lot of time. I mean, most offices. I don’t know offices that have pull-out, you know, Viking ovens in the kitchen. So you’re like, you need something that like really will just easily be microwaved, or it can easily, you know, it can be refrigerated. You know, refrigerated items are awesome. Again, like I said, this is not a time to stress yourself about food, but when you’re doing, you know, larger crowds really just try to get something that, like you said, can go a long way and can feed a lot of people. And you know, now especially a lot of people have different dietary restrictions, and I love you know things with simple ingredients and things that everyone can pretty much eat. One of the things I do because I have like a in my own family. There’s like different dietary restrictions. We have a vegetarian. We have someone that doesn’t like tomatoes. And as I think about making this pasta salad, in my mind, I envision this pasta salad having you know maybe some seafood. But I’m like, oh wait, the vegetarian. So okay, wait, the tomatoes. I can’t have add that to my Italian pasta salad. So what you do there is, like you said, the ingredients can go a long way. I can make two pasta salads, one box, you know, distributed evenly, and then and one, you know, even I can even leave the tomatoes out, and then those that want them in their salad can add it to their salad and just toss it in there. The same thing with, you know, even the seafood. Like I said, I’m a big fan of bars, and when I say that food bars of like, here’s you know the bell peppers, here’s the mushrooms. My daughter can’t stand mushrooms for some reason. I love them, and I’m like that way she doesn’t have to have them, but someone else that loves them can add them to whatever we’re serving that day. So I’m a huge fan of bars. But don’t be afraid of it, and actually, people love it. It like jumps up some sort of like conversation. It’s almost like a good icebreaker at these events because you know you’re kind of nervous and you’re doing this small talk, and now you can talk about, oh, well, why are you adding that? Why are you leaving that off? Okay, I didn’t know that about you. You know, there’s there’s a lot of different things that can come of it, and this makes it easier for everyone, and then there’s no pressure.

Host
You know, you stress the importance of definitely planning your menu in advance. Not only for not stressing you out, but there’s cost savings involved in advance planning too. Talk us through that a little bit.

Johnna French
Absolutely, because you do not want 10 people showing up with the Swedish meatballs. That is, you know, nothing you know grinds my gears more than you show up at a potluck or you know something a party of sorts, and everyone has bought a salad, a good Google spreadsheet. You, they have so many tools out here for you to share things these days. Use it, WhatsApp, all the things. You know, use that to plan out who’s going to bring what, so there isn’t a constant overlap, and as long as you have, you know, your veggies, your proteins, your you know, starches covered, you’re good. And then everyone loves a sweet treat. That’s another thing. You don’t want everyone bringing the cupcakes, you know. So it’s a good idea to have it planned in advance. And also, like I said, then you kind of weed out some of those dietary restrictions so everything doesn’t have peanut butter in it, and it just makes for a better party altogether. So everything’s evenly distributed.

Host
You mentioned as well, I think you you spoke to this a little bit with making that spreadsheet, that delegation is an important part of these things as well.

Johnna French
Yes. So in your email to whoever you’re doing this with, make sure you say let’s stick to what you’re good at. You know, no, there’s no um, there’s no insults there. It’s just this is not the time for experimenting. So you know, say hey, pull out your favorite dish, whatever that is. Let’s let’s bring that to the party. And if it’s bringing a frozen, you know, casserole or a lasagna or whatever from your favorite store, then do that. But this is not the time to experiment and encourage people to bring what they really are good at and what they like to the party. But also, you know, if you do have the overlaps, then it’s you know it’s not a bad idea to suggest, hey, we’ve already have this, you know, and give updates around the party. We already have this, this, and this. If you’re still interested in contributing to the party? Then these are the things that we would like to have. Another great thing I’ve seen over the years is people will actually put the actual items that they want for the party. So then you don’t have to. You know, it’s kind of like a checkbox. Oh, that’s already taken, so I can’t bring that. And that’s good because then it leads, you know, not a lot to the imagination. People don’t have to, you know, feel like they’re, you know, slighted because it’s like, well, somebody got to it first, you know, and there and there’s no harm, no foul there.

Host
Is there a good general rule about how much food to order? Because we’ve got people listening from small businesses that might only have 10 employees up to folks with several 100 who are going to need a lot of catering. Is there a good rule of thumb about deciding how much food to order so that we know we have enough, but we aren’t left throwing a lot of it away at the end of the day?

Johnna French
Well, the beauty of these sort of potluck or you know situations is that when you do have so many items, I think a good thing to remember is maybe like let’s say you’re bringing the chips or the sandwiches. Bring two of those bags because once those run out, there will be something else, and there’s an array of food, you know, on the table. And it’s okay to. I know this is like you know I shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s okay to run out of something. Oh man, that dip! Oh, it was delicious. It ran out. Yes, you got to wait for next year. You know that’s it’s okay. It’s it’s not a bad thing that it ran out. Everyone, you know that’s that’s the that’s the sign of a good dish and that it did run out. And then you you’re not left with a whole bunch of stuff. And it also forces people to explore the other things that are on the table because you know I do that all the time. I get to the bagel tray always after you know the one bagel that I want is gone. I forced me to you know explore other bagel options that I would not have looked at had that one had that option not been there.

Host
Let’s talk about presentation a little bit. You know, you’ve mentioned that a bar is a way that you found functionally is a great way to present the food. You have any other tips for presentation or plating and serving?

Johnna French
Well, depending on how big, like you said, some people have small teams. I’ve seen the rotating trays, which are wonderful. If you you know you can get those where they will rotate around the table. So if you’re going to be at a small table, that’s a good idea. But then also, you know, you just keep it traditional for the larger groups. Something that’s spread along the wall that’s easy to get to. You know, I really prefer, you know, the food to be in kind of like the communal space because then it forces people to stay together instead of having to relocate and go to another room that kind of separates. Everyone, I think it’s it’s a pick you know a place in that central location that’s along the wall with everything lined, and then people can step in and out and get what they need, and that you know that helps things to run a little bit smoothly, and also to make people feel comfortable and make the table and the presentation approachable.

Host
Thinking about the actual space that we’re doing this in, because I’m glad you mentioned that. How would any of the advice that you’ve offered so far today? How would that advice differ for somebody who was holding their holiday get together actually like in their office in their workspace versus somebody that was holding it offsite?

Johnna French
Absolutely, because when it’s in our rented space, someone there’s usually some sort of staff or catering that’s going on there, and they’re able to keep the food warm. They’re able to, you know, keep things refrigerated, and someone is actually paying attention to that. When you’re in a space in an office, traditionally everyone’s kind of like marinating together. So you might have one or two people that are kind of keeping an eye on things, but they’re also socializing. So you want to keep that in mind. Finger foods are a really big go-to for the more office setting gatherings because then people can pick what they want. There’s not someone needing to refill the utensil tray or you know things like that that traditionally in a restaurant someone you know there to say oh you’ve ran out of a fork or your fork dropped on the floor okay let me go grab you another one you know you want to make it easier because in the office because there really isn’t a dedicated staff there to do that. The staff is usually the people that work for the company, and and they want to enjoy this gathering as well. So just keeping that in mind and being a little more, you know, generous in that when you’re setting up for the office environment. And like I said, things that carry well versus when you have it out at a restaurant, you can be a little more liberal about what you’re getting because there’s an expectation that there will be you know some place to keep things heated and warmed or you know refrigerated at a certain temperature or if you need refreshers or refills, there those things will be there. So just you know, just keeping that in mind as you navigate both spaces.

Host
We’ve talked mostly about food today. Let’s talk a little bit about drinks. So we might not be able, especially if we’re having this function during work hours, to serve alcohol or cocktails. But we want to be able to do a little bit more than everybody just bring a two liter of soda, right? So what are some fun ideas for drinks that can elevate the event, make it a little bit special, but not necessarily cocktails?

Johnna French
Yeah. So, ice molds. Those are the best thing that could have happened into the like mocktail fun world, and they’re so easy to make. You can get, you know, just get a plain ice tray, fill it with, you know, some fruits, grapes, blueberries, raspberries, whatever. And like I said, again, visiting the frozen aisle, this goes a long way. You can use these for the drinks as well as you can set them out for a fruit, you know, like a fruit salad or something, you know, like a fruit display tray. So you put those in the ice tray, fill it with water, freeze it, and these can be served. You know, alongside mocktails. They can also be used to honestly just decorate the wherever you’re going to keep the beverages, like you know, the water or the the sodas or whatever you’re going to have on here, or the juices, you know, you can put them in this in a bin with these ice cubes that are, you know, pretty and decorated, and you know, also use flowers, you know, put flowers in the in ice, and like that can be decorative. And then when it melts, it’s just, you know, there’s just basically sort of in this live, you know, beautiful water of flowers, and you know fruits, and it’s it’s really visually appealing. So you know you don’t necessarily have to drink with those ice cubes. You can also make another tray or a bin for that, and have those ice cubes in there as well, and serve drinks. And you know mocktails are really really fun. They’re really popular now because now there’s so many creative ways to get them into your, you know, into your beverages, and people like them. They’re not just, you know, we’re long gone. The days which I appreciate, a bit Shirley Temple, but long gone are the days of the Shirley Temple. And like I said, do not fly away from ice molds. Those are so much fun. You know, you can even pull out, you know, if you have like cookie, you know, like cooking trays that you know have little molds of different things. Use those, and you know, just put whatever you want in there and freeze them. And they are just so fun and decorative.

Host
That’s a very good recommendation. That’s fantastic. You personally, what are some of your favorite holiday dishes?

Johnna French
Oh, I’m a mac and cheese girlie. I’m making it all season from start to finish. It’s just as soon as November one starts, that’s the dish that that’s coming to the table in so many variations. During the holidays, I really, I really go overboard with these. I really. I mean, it’s it’s it’s one of those recipes that I don’t want anyone to um to. You don’t need to know what animal because you will question your health after you have it because there’s so much cheese and butter, and I do not shy away from it during the holidays. During the rest of the year, I’m a little more conservative about it because I am like, okay, I want to indulge, but I don’t want to put, you know, you know, the toothpicks of butter. Let’s stay away from that. But holidays, yes, two whole sticks.

Host
Sounds good to me. Look, there are lots of recipes that people can find for things they can make at their holiday gathering or their personal holiday event this year. Where can we learn more about you and find those recipes online?

Johnna French
Yes, absolutely. You can check me out at JohnnaKnowsGoodFood on TikTok, YouTube, and you can check out the recipes on porkrinds.com or rayberns.com, and there’ll be a ton of things for the holidays.

Host
Johnna, thank you so much. That’s been immensely helpful. Thank you for talking to our audience today, and happy holidays.

Johnna French
Thank you. Happy holidays.