There is an upcoming visit from one of my companies clients, where I do development work for. My company usually invites clients to dinner at the same place each and every time if they visit us. For strong personal (even ethical) reasons I do not want to take meal or anything else from there (**before you ask: details at bottom, though I don't think they are of particular value to this question).
I told my supervisor this the minute he said that the client would come over for a visit and asked how we come over this problem. He was very understanding, remembered that he did not see me there for ages and said that this would not be a problem, since there is no dinner planned in the tight schedule for the meeting. Problem solved (i.e. not even to come up), great!
Now I got the invitation for the dinner at the said place anyways. How can I avoid the dinner without being 'that guy' to both my team and the client?
Please note that dinner is the first point on the agenda where everyone will get to know each other. Some people from their company already met some people from our company at a previous meeting at their place (I was not with them). I already had contact to some of them via audio-conference.
**Details: Several points make me avoid this place (although I do not think this improves the question):
- I am vegetarian (on the way to vegan) and once their vegetarian offer contained meat. They only confessed after I stressed this issue to their management, they never apologized. Ever since then, I never showed up there again and plan to never show up there again.
- Their products are generally of very low quality (from mass animal agriculture, even their eggs are from mass agriculture) and do not even taste well.
- I usually bring my own meal cooked at home with high quality products to work.
- The only real reason to go there is the insane proximity (like a 2 minute walk) to our company.