Before March 2020, corporate cafeterias were bustling spaces, offering high-end, fresh, innovative food cooked to-order and bursting with global flavors.
Now, five years after the beginning of the pandemic, these facilities are very different places. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, they’re relatively busy, albeit much less so than pre-pandemic; on Mondays and Fridays, traffic is significantly down, as employees opt to work at home.
Despite this, corporations are still investing in their dining options, maintaining what they already have, or even designing and opening new cafeterias and marketplaces. Many are taking the view that to attract people back to the office, they need to offer amenities, including great food.
“They want amenities that will theoretically draw people back into the office,” says Nick Saccaro, president, Quest Food Management Services, Lombard, Ill. “On the flip side, we’re under a lot of financial pressure because they just don’t have the number of people in the building to support these dining programs the way they need to work.”
For some people it’s not about the food. “We heard from Gen Z and, for some of the younger populations, the draw to the office was more the social side — not the food itself but the interaction with other humans,” says Joseph Schumaker, FCSI, founder and CEO, FoodSpace, Meridian, Idaho.
According to a Business and Industry Segment Guide from market research company Datassential, people who use corporate dining options typically do so several times a week. And the top reason is to save time, followed by convenience, networking, socializing and affordability.
Seating areas should offer as much variety as possible and at Ricca Design Studios locations they run the gamut. Image of DaVita Tower courtesy of Ricca Design Studios
Dining Area Design
Some workplaces are returning to traditional serving lines rather than the more modern marketplace-style that was popular before the pandemic. “They’re smaller, take less labor, and there are some clients who don’t want any self-serve” due to food safety issues, Schumaker points out.
It can be very hard to design workplace dining for such varying numbers of potential customers. It’s important, says Kip Serfozo, LEED AP, WELL AP, vice president of design, Cini-Little International, Germantown, Md., to not design for maximum volume, because too often the space will feel empty. Instead, for peak days, plan on operating your cafeteria or marketplace at full capacity, with secondary options like micromarkets helping manage the volume of people.
On the shoulder days of Monday and Friday, conversely, you don’t want your dining facility to look dead. There are a few ways around this:
Close your dining room completely and operate a ghost kitchen, offering your full menu but only digitally. “You have to make it look intentional,” Serfozo says.
If your operation is designed around different stations, close some that are not central but make them still look attractive. This could be a pull-down gate with a nice logo on the front or closures that look like other elements of the cafeteria.
Flexible stations, like one that can be a coffee shop but then transition to a deli, for example, says Jeremy Kittelson, principal, Ricca Design Studios, Denver. If this flexibility is built in, any equipment needs to serve at least a dual purpose and signage needs to be easily replaced to have strong branding at each daypart.
It’s important to lay out foodservice facilities properly so they still look alive, says Jim Thorpe, senior food service designer with contractor Aramark, Philadelphia. “We try to get the most active stations as soon as you enter so you don’t walk past three dead stations to get there.” Then Thorpe figures out the path of typical customers to guide them past the active, and most popular, stations. Aramark closes some stations — further out from the center of the dining room — with graphic panels.
As for what corporate workplaces need to offer, nonnegotiable are coffee stations, salad bars (often with some hot foods) and a deli. And catering is more important than it used to be, says Saccaro, because the client wants to treat people to food for meetings or gatherings when they come into the office.
Everything about a corporate cafeteria’s design needs to be flexible, says Thorpe, because food trends change and so do employee demographics. For example, 80% of the employee population at an account in Branchburg, N.J., is Indian, so two types of Indian cuisine are offered. “But they need to be able to flex and be something different [if things change],” he says.
Coffee shops, for example, can convert to happy hour areas later in the day. Saccaro is seeing this happen on Thursdays more than the Fridays because it’s become such a quiet day.
Aramark likes to have the most popular, and active stations close to the entrance so customers don’t have to pass any that are closed on quiet days. Image of Aramark HQ courtesy of Aramark Workplace Experience Group
Distributed Dining
To lure employees into the office, some corporations are taking the food to them, with distribution points scattered throughout buildings. “In the case of bigger facilities, everyone wants their food now; can they get it right outside their door,” says Scott Reitano, principal, Reitano Design Group, Indianapolis.
A tech company in Silicon Valley was designing a new dining facility during shutdown. Recognizing that it had to be more flexible than offering just a cafeteria, it included moveable carts in its foodservice plans. Each cart is designed to be an action station that can serve anything from crepes to quesadillas to ramen and can change from one concept to another easily.
“We really paid attention to the branding [because] they’ve got to be authentic and can’t feel generic,” says Schumaker. “We created J-hook systems so you can fully interchange the front of the cart.”
And while the carts can run on batteries, because they were planned for, Schumaker included more electricity through the building to power these wherever they pop up. The carts, he says, are “very, very flexible.”
Aramark facilities often run pop-up carts featuring something new, which means they become a focal point. These carts are usually manned by guest local restaurants, who gain brand recognition and appeal to office workers. On slow days, the contractor might offer a small coffee program in the morning and a deli or local restaurant option at lunch. “We also use pop-up carts for special treats like a candy bar or popcorn station,” says Thorpe.
Another option for distributing dining across a building is micromarkets. These can be unmanned or require just one employee, Serfozo points out. They can also be open 24 hours and operate like a convenience store.
Most micromarkets also have seating nearby, Serfozo says, and often include vending machines with hot and cold food, which are now “associated with the micromarket to make it a food spot,” he says.
“As micromarkets have gotten bigger, vending has evolved,” says Diane Pancoski, Aramark’s vice president of marketing strategy and innovation for the workplace division. Aramark has been piloting machines with foods like ramen and fresh-baked sweet goods heated using the same rapid oven technology that’s in kitchens. “In those food desert areas where people have 30 minutes for lunch, they still want something hot and fresh,” she says.
For some corporations, micromarkets or scattered small cafeterias can also be delivery spots, says Reitano. This means that during certain busier hours, employees can order food and foodservice workers will bring it to the dining spot closest to them. Operations can also include speed ovens so the food can be delivered cold and in bulk, then served buffet-style, he adds.
Quest Foodservice Management favors stations that can flex throughout the day, changing from perhaps a coffee shop to a deli to a happy hour bar. Image of The Fairhouse Cafe courtesy of Morgan Scofes Photography
Digital Orders
Perhaps the biggest change in B&I foodservice is the widespread adoption of digital ordering — and how it’s transformed takeout.
Doug Huber, CFA, CFSP, FCSI, principal, Foodservice Consultants Studio, Henrico, Va., had one client who wanted lockers for pickup. This gives employees “a sense of control,” he says, since only the person ordering could open the locker with a unique QR code. “It also gives them a sense of sanitation. There’s a perception that it’s packaged and no one is handling it.”
While there were ad-hoc pickup stations before the pandemic, now they’re being built in with millwork, says Serfozo, so they look like part of the facility.
It’s important that customers picking up food can get it quickly and can circumvent any lines, Kittelson points out. And ideally, he adds, this area is located close to the kitchen so the food and the employees responsible for it don’t have to travel far.
At Aramark facilities, most digital orders are collected at pickup windows “because people like the interaction with a person,” says Thorpe.
Pickup spots need to be more prominent, says Saccaro. All pickup spots in
Quest operations are ambient temperature, he says, because people pick up their food shortly after ordering. Quest likes to place this area near the kitchen but clients want it to be as convenient as possible for employees picking up food.
Seating Styles
When getting food in a corporate dining facility, some patrons want to take it back to their desk while others want a more sociable experience, or sometimes to eat during a team meeting.
Because of this, seating is becoming more varied, says Serfozo, with everything from high-tops to traditional tables, lounge seating, and even small breakout or semi-private areas around the perimeter of the dining area.
What is gaining a lot of traction, he says, is outdoor dining, even in colder climates. “We all like to be outside but getting outside is now more of a wellness thing.”
Offering outside seating also allows operators to offer more seating and more flexible seating without encroaching on the floor space. Aramark has activated many outdoor seating areas, often incorporating games to draw customers outside, and sometimes with garage doors or fire pits so the spaces can be used in three seasons.
Overall, says Saccaro, corporate employees are “prioritizing their time differently.”
