Creating an appealing menu that encourages your staff’s wellness can benefit your employees and your business. It’s common for people to hear “nutritious” and recoil a bit. They might envision bland steamed vegetables or beige-centric foods, things that remind us of having to clean our plates as children. If done correctly, however, you can choose a catering menu that’s both healthy and delicious.
Giving your staff healthy food can benefit both of you greatly, so it’s worth the extra step to discover healthier corporate catering options. You might be surprised to hear that the food you serve has an impact on your business, but think of it like this: if the food you eat can affect how you perform while doing exercise, it can affect how you operate at work. We’ll go over in detail how your employee’s health affects your business and provide examples of healthy catering choices for your staff.
How Employee Health Affects Your Business
Around half of employers with 50+ employees offer some form of wellness program, and with good reason. Health, in general, is essential to having a well-functioning body and mind, and investing in employee wellness is a great way to help your staff on their wellness journeys. According to WellSteps, employees who maintain healthy lifestyles tend to perform better and manage their stress and time more efficiently. This leads to higher productivity as a result, helping your business and employees thrive at the same time.
Providing Healthy Choices for Your Staff
In a study done with approximately 182,000 people, it was found that diets with a variety of vegetables, fruits, and protein were associated with increased grey matter in the brain. Providing nutritious meals for your employees is an easy way to implement and enforce wellness. It’s a simple task to go and grab free food and it can even become the gateway to healthy routines for employees that are having trouble getting started.
Examples of Healthy Catering Choices
Healthy catering isn’t a one-size-fits-all, there are hundreds of ways you can create a nutritious menu. It’s important to implement catering that’s personalized for your events and staff preferences to maximize the effect. If you’re interested in learning more about personalized catering specifically, we have a great article about it here.
You can (and should) try to combine some of the examples below to maximize the healthiness of your catering. Being conscious of other people’s diets is great, for example, but that could also look like serving nothing but greasy, unhealthy foods.
Dietary-Conscious Catering
Dietary-conscious catering should include vegan and vegetarian options, options for keto diets, and mindfulness related to allergens and religious diets. One of the worst things you can do for your metabolism and health is not eating at all. It’s common for people with food allergies or special diets to feel excluded from catering because, for the most part, people generally don’t care enough to consider these restrictions. They’ve gotten used to picking at some french fries or rice.
If you really want everyone to enjoy the benefits of healthy food, being inclusive should be a top priority. It can be as simple as food allergen labeling, or asking your staff if they have any special dietary needs you should consider. Not only will they be able to fully enjoy the catering you got like everyone else, but they’ll feel deeply thankful for it.
Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables
Seasonal food is cheaper, tastes better, and more nutritious. It makes sense that produce grown during its original time will be at peak performance, right?
You might notice that berries out of season are flavorless and expensive at the same time. When they’re in season, they grow in abundance and are much tastier, meaning they’ll be cheaper and more nutritious as a result. Incorporating seasonal fruits and vegetables into your menu is an easy way to save money on food costs and provide delicious nutritious food to your staff.
Luxury Soup/Salad Bar
During the diet crazes of the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, the soup and salad combination appeared. While we’ve done away with many of those fad diets, we’ve fine-tuned the soup and salad combination.
Soup and salad is a great way to introduce more vegetables into a person’s diet, especially when you provide interesting and delicious healthy options. Artichoke hearts, red quinoa, housemade salad dressings, various freshly cooked proteins, and whatever else you could envision on your perfect salad. 90% of adults don’t get the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables, and one of the easiest ways to combat that is through providing tastier options. People will be more willing to eat vegetables if you provide them with tasty options to consume them.
Mediterranean Food
The ‘Mediterranean diet’ is still widely popular today, mainly consisting of veggie-centric dishes, lentils, whole grains, and fresh ingredients. Mediterranean food is often agreeable with many other diets as well. It encourages people to drink water and includes exercise as part of its food pyramid.
This is an option that can help encourage your employees to try and enjoy new foods, and potentially implement them into their own diets. Since it’s fairly agreeable for most, it combines health and inclusivity as well.
How to Get Started With Your Company Wellness Journey
If you’re interested in adding food to your company’s wellness plan, Zerocater can help. We work with companies of all budgets and sizes with a variety of options for your staff’s needs (yes, even hybrid employees!). You can look through your catering options with filters for dietary needs and food types, and we’ll even remember your previous orders. If you want to see new options, tell us how you felt about your last catering venture and our AI can suggest new catering options for you to choose from. We’re excited to work with you! Just click the “Get Pricing” button, tell us about your company’s needs and budget, and we’ll quickly get back to you.
