3 Reasons to Make Food Available as a Perk at Work Using Micro Markets 

1. Positive Impacts 

Even before the pandemic, a growing number of employers were tapping into the intrinsic value of making food available to employees in the workplace. A SHRM.org (Society of Human Resources Management) 2019 Employee Benefits Report notes that food and beverage amenities are available at a large and growing number of workplaces: 

• 95% provide a break room or kitchenette 
• 78% provide free coffee 
• 13% offer subsidized or free cafeterias 
• 31% even offer free snacks and beverages (up from 22 percent in 2015) 

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers are increasingly looking for ways to provide food and beverages for employees during the work day so they do not have to leave for meals or snacks. 

Not only do employees who leave and return represent increased potential for virus transmission, long waits, social distancing requirements, and other slowdowns at restaurants, coffee shops and fast food chains can negatively impact productivity and increase the amount of time employees are away from their office or workstation. Shift workers who only have 30 minutes for lunch may be hard-pressed to leave and return with food, let alone have time to consume it before returning to work. Additionally, for workers who have to arrive early or stay late, having food options available to them on-premises is vital. 

Dedicating space away from workstations where workers can obtain and consume food is also an important consideration. It is fundamentally important for employers to encourage employees to take regular breaks away from their desks and workstations, including snack breaks and lunch breaks with food and beverages. Even before COVID-19, 80 percent of workers said they normally ate lunch at their desk. White collar or salaried workers are even more likely to stay at their desk for lunch than their hourly and blue-collared counterparts. 

As quoted on NPR.org, "We know that creativity and innovation happen when people change their environment, and especially when they expose themselves to a nature-like environment, to a natural environment," says Kimberly Elsbach, a professor at the University of California, Davis Graduate School of Management, who studies workplace psychology. "So staying inside, in the same (single) location, is really detrimental to creative thinking. It's also detrimental to doing that rumination that's needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an 'aha' moment.” 

Providing access to meals, snacks, and beverages throughout the day encourages employees to step away from their workspace and take not only mandated but beneficial breaks away from computers, stationary standing or sitting, and so on. If a variety of refreshments are readily available to employees on-site, they have more time to eat and more time to engage in beneficial activities, such as taking a walk around the block and getting fresh air during breaks or lunch. 

2. Practical Efficiencies 

Very few employers have the space and financial resources to offer restaurant-like food service facilities complete with commercial kitchens, food workers, and large dining spaces. However, a large number of employers, even small operations, already have space set aside for breaks and lunchrooms where micro markets that provide workers with a wide variety of healthy, fresh, and even hot foods could be installed and operated. All you need is space, power, and internet connectivity! 

Avanti micro market and intelligent vending solutions are modular. Even a small break room could potentially house a significant variety of food options for employees. One of the benefits of choosing an Avanti micro market for your workplace is our expertise. We can show you a variety of options that might be appropriate for your space, and even help you implement more than one type of micro market solution (micro markets, smart vending, order-ahead with delivery, etc.) at your facility, giving your employees the most variety and convenience, including fully contactless food options. 

You may not want to the spend corporate resources needed to provide a robust food-at-work program for your employees. However, micro markets can be installed in your workplace at little or no cost. We have micro market operators who are ready to assist in the implementation and fully operate markets at your facility. They take on the responsibility and costs of employee food service at your facility, so you can stay focused on what is most important to your organization while still enjoying the positive impacts that come from making food readily available to your workers. 

3. To Offset Disappearing Perks 

Whether due to financial or safety constraints as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have found themselves in the position of needing to temporarily (or even permanently) eliminate a number employee perks, especially employee perks and workplace benefits that involve gatherings where social distancing cannot be maintained or use of shared equipment in the workplace. Even using a shared refrigerator to store food prepared at home could result in people touching the food containers and beverages of their co-workers. 

Eliminating perks can decimate employee morale and result in employee backlash and turnover. However, due to the realities of COVID-19, food service and dining at work must evolve. Employers can improve health and safety conditions in areas where employees consume (or obtain) food in the workplace by implementing new protocols and making transitions, such as: 

• Cleaning surfaces (counters, tables, chairs) and equipment such as coffee makers, water fountains, water coolers, etc., more frequently and/or after each use 
• Limiting the number of people handling food and beverage preparation or packaging 
• Socializing in smaller groups to accommodate social distancing 
• Not leaving food out in the open 
• Transitioning from buffet style cafeterias or catered meals to packaged single-serve grab-and-go or pre-ordered items 
• Using disposable, compostable, or recyclable single use serving dishes, plates, cutlery, stirrers, etc. 
• Increasing use of low and no-touch equipment, such as changing from a multi-cup beverage carafe-style dispenser to a single-serve beverage dispenser 
• Making hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes available in for employees returning to work and at all common or shared use areas (break and lunch rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, etc.) 
• Limit the number of people coming to the workplace to make deliveries of food and beverages (coordinate combined ordering) 
• Ensuring deliveries are clearly and individually marked so packaging does not have to be opened to see what is inside 

Traditional cafeterias where employees could gather to get food and eat, and large kitchens where employees used to congregate for meals and breaks may not be practical solutions going forward, at least into the foreseeable future. But that does not mean that companies cannot continue to provide food and beverages to employees as a perk. Likewise, companies that have had to close buffet or cafeteria style dining services can continue to provide meals and snacks to employees in other ways, rather than eliminating valued benefits of employment. 

Avanti’s Smart N Go Market intelligent vending solutions and unattended retail micro markets are perfect examples of substitutes which employees may find just as (or even more) attractive than corporate dining was in the past. 

A wide variety of food and beverages can be dispensed using our solutions, including fresh food, ready to eat foods, ready to heat and eat foods, meal and snack-sized portions, and so on. Companies can even choose to (fully or partially) subsidize Smart N Go Markets and unattended retail micro markets, turning food into a true employment perk or giving market credit as a form of rewards and recognition.  

5 Benefits of Making Food Available as a Perk in the Workplace 

Providing access to high quality food options at work offers five specific benefits. These benefits can keep your employees safer, happier, healthier, and more satisfied, all of which can help you recruit and hire quality candidates and improve employee retention. 

1. Keeping employees local 

Keeping employees on-site for lunch and break times by providing access to high quality and a variety of food and beverages in the workplace can increase productivity, collaboration, and socialization. It can also reduce potential employee exposure to COVID-19 and other germs to which they might be exposed should they need to go to restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, or other retail establishments for food and beverages. 

Having food available to workers on-site even precludes the necessity of having food delivered. This also helps to limit the number of people coming to the workplace, reducing the potential for exposure to COVID-19 and other germs or bacteria. 

2. Improving productivity and engagement 

Almost all employees (93 percent) who reported feeling valued by their employers said they were motivated to do their best at work and nearly as many (88 percent) said feeling valued at work made them feel more engaged. High engagement and job satisfaction nearly always translates into increased productivity, lower levels of staff turnover, and improved recruiting. 

3. Offering variety 

All food-at-work perks are not created equal! To be perceived as a true workplace benefit by employees, food options available at work must include a variety food, snacks, and beverages, including fresh and “healthy” foods, and creating additional variety by changing the items available periodically or based on employee demand or requests. 

Smart N Go Markets and unattended retail micro markets are ideal solutions where variety is key, since they can dispense a far greater variety in numbers, varieties, types, sizes, shapes, and other factors compared to traditional vending machines. 

4. Health and wellness support 

Having access to healthier meal and snack options increased drastically about a month after COVID-19 pandemic closures and lockdowns began to occur in the U.S. Initially demand for comfort food and beverages rose in April 2020 when 95 percent of the population experiencing some type of stay-home restriction. Just a few weeks later, nearly one third of food service operators said their focus switched to better-for-you options that help boost wellness, according to foodservicedirector.com. 

A desire to have more foods and beverages that support health, well-being, and good nutrition available at work is not a pandemic phenomenon. While it is obviously not the employer’s job to dictate the diet of employees, there are notable benefits for employers who have a healthy workforce. According to Forbes.com: 

• Optimal nourishment can raise national productivity levels by 20% (World Health Organization) 
• Healthier employees are (generally) happier, calmer, more engaged, sleep better, and sick less frequently 
• People with unhealthy eating habits are 66% more likely to demonstrate poor productivity at work (Brigham Young University) 
• 75% of corporate healthcare expenses are spent on chronic diseases, most of which are diet-related: poor nutrition, physical inactivity, frequent alcohol consumption, tobacco use – costing employers an estimated $28.2M a year in lost productivity (U.S. Centers for Disease Control) 

Once again, especially compared to traditional vending machines which are widely stocked with processed snacks and sugary beverages, Smart N Go Markets and micro markets give employers the ability to make fresh foods available in the workplace, not just the chips and candy bars that fit into typical vending machines.   

5. Employee awards and gifts 

Some employers started providing employees with free or subsidized food after the pandemic hit in order to encourage employees to stay on-premises during lunch and breaks and have been doing so now for nearly (or more than) a year. It is reasonable to assume that employees now consider this a benefit, and that these employers are using this benefit as a recruiting and retention tool. 

Other employers have yet to leverage the availability of a high-quality food and beverage program as an employee perk. Since keeping employees at the workplace during lunch and breaks translates into increased productivity (less time away from work, planning where to go, ordering food, etc.) this could be the ideal time to bring a Smart N Go Market or micro market into the workplace. Additionally, with a variety of food, snacks, and beverages available on-site, employers can give market credits to employees as a form of employee recognition or as a reward for goal achievement, teamwork, or other positive workplace outcomes. 

For employers whose workers have been working remotely, Smart N Go Markets and Avanti micro markets are incredibly effective as a corporate food service solution. They can be replenished as often as needed to keep up with increasing demand as workers come back to the workplace full time or as part of a hybrid workplace/remote work situation. Likewise, in the case of reduced capacity due to temporary lockdowns, inventory can be temporarily reduced to align with usage.   

If your organization has been looking for ways to improve workplace conditions and add benefits for employees, expanding the variety and options of food and beverages available for purchase at work could be an ideal solution. The timing for adding food as a perk at work using unattended intelligent retail vending and micro markets could be especially appropriate if your company has a remote workforce who are beginning to return to the workplace and you need to find a new corporate dining solution or upgrade your breakroom. 

Contact Us Today To Learn More!