Business and industry foodservice operators all have different journeys, priorities, and return-to-office strategies. What is universal: Foodservice as an amenity has a major role to play in every organization.
Joe Ganci, Sodexo USAIn the evolving workplace, this often means beginning with property considerations. Companies are looking at their real estate portfolios and how space is being utilized, sometimes consolidating the distribution of employees into buildings they own versus leased spaces.
Those common spaces are necessary because business leaders and workers view offices quite differently today than pre-pandemic. Having 1,000 employees no longer means a company needs 1,000 desks. Today’s business environment calls for creating a holistic workplace experience where the office supports collaboration, meetings, and the culture of the company — more than for heads-down work on a computer that employees can do from anywhere. The result: Office buildings are alive, they’re exciting, and they have a positive energy.
Foodservice is mission-critical; it sustains the body, mind, and soul. Our corporate clients understand and value that. Notably, Sodexo has collaborated with several companies to reevaluate their approach to their food programs and developed contemporary solutions that meet the needs of their employees.
Sodexo’s workplace experience research, conversations with clients, and consumer insights led to the rebranding of Modern Recipe, our food experience brand, delivering made-from-scratch, sustainable food in flexible, inviting spaces designed to inspire connections and support employee well-being. The locally sourced, plant-forward menu is prepared on-site and designed to focus on wellness while reducing waste and minimizing our carbon footprint.
We have found that post-pandemic, consumers are still very experimental. They like variety: grain bowls, noodle bowls, salad bars, market bars that offer hot and cold food choices by the ounce. When designing or redesigning corporate dining operations, we now place a greater emphasis on plug-and-play mobile equipment, from grills to open-flame stoves, allowing the operator to switch stations from day to day to avoid menu and facility fatigue.
Prepaid mobile ordering, scan-and-go and pickup of to-go orders are services heavily in demand at Sodexo’s corporate dining accounts, but there’s also a new emphasis on all-day use of dining facilities. Back in the day, you would open for breakfast, close, then open again for lunch. Now, we serve people around the clock with flexible formats.
In addition, today’s corporate clients also demand alternate forms of foodservice, such as lobby coffee bars, often where no infrastructure exists. For a Jersey City, N.J., client, for instance, Sodexo created a self-contained barista bar, with a dedicated water supply and no utility connections other than electricity. Its flexibility allows this coffee bar to even function as a wine bar in the evenings. It also fits on an elevator, making it easy for staff to relocate it for different uses throughout the client site.
Providing innovative solutions means meeting our clients’ workplace experience needs with agile, sustainable food and valued experiences that support employee health and well-being in a radically transforming work world.
Joe Ganci
President
Corporate Services Food
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