Food at work can look different for every business.
Some companies provide a full cafeteria service, others just snacks and coffee, and a few offer nothing at all (how sad!). While necessary - benefits like health insurance, bonuses, and gym memberships take the spotlight - but here at Fooda, we know exactly why an office lunch program ends up being the most used and widely loved employee perk.
A food program is more than a monetary cost against your business. It’s a tool that builds structure into workdays, promotes a sense of belonging, and reflects a culture of inclusivity. Without it, you’re missing out on a key opportunity to distinguish your business from competitors and give back to your employees on a more frequent basis.
A lacking food culture in the workplace can slowly chip away at collaboration and belonging. When lunch and break times are scattered, employees miss out on opportunities to develop meaningful work relationships.
If your business doesn’t have a set hybrid working schedule, many employees will opt to work from home, slashing office attendance. This further feeds into disconnected teams.
As informal bonding disappears, loyalty wanes and there’s no real sense of attachment. After all, humans are social creatures. We search for spaces where we feel seen, respected, and recognized. When your business’s community is weak, hiring, retention, and growth suffers.
Food is powerful. It brings us together, affects our moods, and helps us socialize.
Sharing a meal with your family, a partner, or friends at the end of day gives an opportunity to relax, unwind, and deepen our bonds. In the workplace, shared meals give your team a chance to engage outside of the meeting room. Ideas can come up organically and new connections between colleagues can flourish. Plus, bringing team members of all tenure and rank together strengthens your business’s community.
Through our Popup restaurant service, Fooda brings local restaurants to your office. You choose who you want to feature, how often, and when. For instance, if your office has a hybrid working schedule, you can host a Mexican taqueria on Monday, a Chinese restaurant on Wednesday, and a Greek vendor on Thursday - it’s up to you! Your menus can include allergy and dietary options, ensuring every employee can participate, and feels cared for.
We can serve meals from your cafeteria space, meeting room, or arrange deliveries. Plus, we set up and clean up on our own, no need for your team to worry about logistics! As Fooda serves for a two-hour window, lunch for your team will overlap, making it possible for colleagues to eat together.
Our client, Tractor Supply, has seen a lot of improvement in their company morale since working with Fooda. Brian Evans, VP of HR, explains, “Fooda drives people to socialize at lunch. ‘What’s the Fooda restaurant today?’ That’s a conversation starter around here. For example, our CEO loves it and you can find him there, striking up conversations with people from all across the company.”
Lunch seems like a small moment in a long work day, but the conversations and access to great food can have a tremendous impact on your team’s camaraderie!
Manually tracking budgets and expenses, collecting physical receipts, or arranging Venmo meal splits can be a real chore. It makes it difficult for team leads to organize team lunches, and deters employees from participating company-sponsored meals.
Even more, with everyone in your office juggling different schedules and responsibilities, access to reliable and affordable meals makes a difference. Meetings can go long. Mornings and nights can be hectic for employees with families - making it difficult to pack meals. Going offsite for lunch can be time consuming and expensive.
Everyone, from your summer intern, to CEO, benefits from improved access and inclusivity. An office lunch program can introduce stability and wellbeing to otherwise hectic schedules.
A well-structured lunch catering program can make your business more appealing. Plus, they’re a reliable source of excitement and joy during the workday. Employee-sponsored meals are a tremendous value-add, helping maximize workplace attendance.
Catered meals by Fooda are efficient, served fresh, and perfectly portioned - exactly what your employees want. It’s up to you, your employees can serve themselves with our drop catering service, or pick up boxed meals.
Additionally, Fooda’s subsidies and analytics platform cut through the noise. Our digital platform helps admins oversee expense reimbursements, budget visibility, employee participation, and more. No need for emails and paper receipts! This level of insight eliminates scattered information, making it easy to understand what’s performing well, and opportunities to optimize in the future.
Ujjwal Gupta, Cofounder and COO, of our client, BenchPrep, shares: “We believe it saves at least 30 minutes per day because employees don’t have to manage logistics of going out to lunch, ordering, coming back, sitting, eating. It probably saves workers a lot at home too. They don’t need to be cooking or thinking about it the night before and in the morning”.
Workplace food programs give employees precious time back each day. Food is fresh and available, which reduces decision fatigue, and enables employees to more fully utilize their break times.
It happens to all of us: while routines are comfortable, they can get boring, fast. When each shift tends to bring the same meetings and tasks, the office can feel somewhat stale. Over time, this can impact focus, and negatively affect retention. It’s a vicious cycle: as output slips, so does your motivation and morale.
Fresh food and access to diverse lunches makes a return to the office exciting. Here at Fooda, we love seeing the joy on our clients’ faces when we serve dynamic and fresh lunches.
Employees want to feel taken care of in the workplace. Meal deliveries from Fooda help you provide for your team, while giving them control over their lunches.
Here’s how meal deliveries work with Fooda: Your team has access to 6-8 different local restaurants every day. We use our tech to provide your team with options they’ll always want, so you can avoid menu fatigue and keep participation high. Through their Fooda mobile app, your employees can explore menus, place their orders, and pay through Fooda’s POS.
Fooda consolidates orders from the entire team, then picks up all the orders. When you work with Fooda, we assign your team a dedicated Fooda team member. This means you and your building’s security will always know who to expect.
All meals are delivered within the same time slot every time. If given permission, we can even deliver meals straight to your team’s desks! This system significantly boosts productivity: your team can stay on task at work, knowing that lunch is taken care of.
Take it from our client, Hulu: “Fooda has absolutely increased our employee productivity. And most importantly people are eating and lunch is fun again. Sometimes when you have back to back meetings there’s no time to eat, causing you to be ravenous toward the end of the day. Now, employees are always satisfied and excited to see what restaurant is coming next.
When employees feel like they belong, daily output and retention rates can skyrocket. As your team grows, Fooda can scale with it, without a drop in quality. From less than 10, to 1000s of employees working on-site, our dining solutions can accommodate teams of any size.
There’s more to the ROI of an office lunch program than money saved. It’s the combined weight of your employee sentiment, increased productivity, and excitement about being in the office. When considering your own strategy, it’s important to let your employee’s thoughts guide you - after all, they’re the ones who will be participating!
Designing a custom workplace food program shouldn’t be another source of stress. Here are some steps to help you sort out your priorities.
Outline the physical spaces you plan on using. Do you have a:
Fooda can help your team work through all your office lunch program ideas! We assign your team a dedicated Fooda manager, who will get to know your team, habits, and goals. They’ll help you build a completely custom and budget-friendly food program.
Oftentimes, the costs of not having an office lunch program are silent - but they are highly impactful. Food can strengthen your business’s community, improve motivation, and fortify your benefits package. It’s more than just lunch - it’s an important investment in your employees!
Fooda’s flexible solutions, including restaurant Popups, full cafeterias, and meal deliveries, helps employers like you create experiences your team will look forward to. With top-notch support, access to data and analytics, and reliable logistics, we make it easy to turn lunch into one of your strongest culture-building tools.
If you’re ready to feed morale, efficiency, and company growth, book your introduction call with the Fooda team today!
An office lunch program improves employee satisfaction, fosters collaboration, and increases productivity. Shared meals encourage organic conversations, strengthen cross-team relationships, and reduce time lost to off-site lunch breaks. It also enhances your benefits package, helping with recruitment and retention.
Not necessarily. Fooda’s programs can be customized to fit different budgets. You can offer full subsidies, partial subsidies, or employee-pay models. With platforms like Fooda’s analytics system, companies can monitor spending, participation, and optimize costs over time.
