Hardly a Monday-morning meeting goes by without the grumble of a hungry stomach or the restless shifting of tired people. We’re all busy: This often leads to skipping meals—including the all-important breakfast—or eating some shrink-wrapped monstrosity that’s more about convenience than nutrition.
Four Ways Company Meals Boost Your Bottom Line
The problem with subpar diets in the workplace is that they have consequences that extend far beyond one employee’s unhappy belly. From combating fatigue to boosting brainpower, there are many benefits to bringing healthy catered meals into your office—not the least of which is improving your company’s bottom line and finding mouthwatering ways to increase profit.
- Boost Morale, Bite by Bite
When asked what their employers could do to make them feel more engaged, more than 50 percent of people surveyed said it’s all about recognition.
Something as simple as bringing in a catered lunch once a week shows employees that you value them as people. They need to eat and you want to feed them. It’s a nurturing instinct as old as time, except now you can have someone else do the messy cooking part. - Improve Profitability and Productivity
It’s impossible to concentrate when you’re hungry, but trying to fuel your body with vending machine snacks isn’t a stellar move, either. The same goes for your staff. There’s a proven mind-gut connection that showcases how important good nutrition is to cognitive function. Start the day right by supplying your workforce with a balanced, protein-rich breakfast. Or, help employees push through a late-night deadline by bringing in on-demand catering featuring the best grub from local eateries. - Healthier Living Overall
When you lose a salaried employee for a few days due to illness, you’re stuck with a depleted workforce or a bill for a temp. Either way, you can expect both your labor costs and your office-wide output to suffer. Helping your staff eat healthier inspires an overall shift toward a more balanced lifestyle. You can bring in a yoga teacher to lead morning stretch classes or install a company gym, but unless you also provide a way for everyone to infuse their body with high-quality, delicious food, all those workouts will be undone by happy-hour binges and stale coffee cake in the break room. - Keep Employees on Task and Engaged
What does an hour lunch break really cost a company? In addition to the hour away from their desk, employees likely lose work time leading up to lunch as they anticipate the break and decide where they want to eat. There’s more downtime as they settle back into their workspace and try to return to their routine. Calls are missed, concentration is broken, and who knows what fast food was consumed in the meantime.
Providing lunch catering or meeting snacks for your employees isn’t about keeping them under lock in key. Much the opposite, in fact. Set up the conference room with a delicious pasta buffet or gourmet sandwiches, and you’ve created an atmosphere suited for brainstorming and building camaraderie. Instead of scattering for an hour, people have somewhere to sit, talk, and—perhaps most importantly—eat some amazing food that is fresh, full of flavor, and beneficial for their brains and bodies.
