Could home meal replacement prove a great new way to make money? Or will staff quickly feel they are office bound enough as it is asks Liesel Van Ast
The one stop office: Outside? It's here The US is blazing the trail for selling everything life requires right there in the office, says Lisa Sandberg
Meals to go: Company for dinner
Could home meal replacement prove a great new way to make money? Or will staff quickly feel they are office bound enough as it is asks Liesel Van Ast
Employers are in heated competition to attract, retain and incentivise their staff. And home meal replacement is becoming a big part of that as employers step up retail offerings with food to go for the hard pressed worker.
The jury is out on whether this is a great thing for staff, but if the efforts of certain caterers is anything to go by, it's big business.
Catering company Sodexho is leading a gastronomic revolution in the workplace, crossing lunchtime barriers to step into the home food market with ready meals prepared in the canteen for heating at home.
The company already runs more than 100 employ-ment based shops "helping workers cut down on supermarket trips".
Sodexho hopes to offer its Now for Later range in all Just Trading stores before long. It also offers services such as dry cleaning, gyms and film processing, aimed at the onestop office shop.
PR manager Clare Meredith says: "This part of our business has grown substantially and is most successful in blue chip locations. There's definitely potential for further growth."
"The canteen and shop combination works well, and we'll review the home meal replacement to see how it can be extended as well as to look at new food ranges," Meredith promises.
What are the multiples doing to tackle the new competition? Apart from Waitrose, not a lot, though Spar is looking at siting stores in offices and possible tie ups as an option to developing a Spar franchise.
"People have little or no time for lunchbreaks even if they have time to do a weekly shop, they have enough stress and can often do without going to a supermarket," says Carol Hubbards, a Waitrose spokesperson. "So we've developed Waitrose@work an office shopping service through the internet offering our full range of products."
Some 70 companies employing 65,000 people have taken it up. "We've got companies queuing up to join and the potential is huge," says Hubbards.
Waitrose also has a retail outlet in British Airways. "They're a big company and staff are out on a limb, so it's viable to have a small branch there. We're mainly selling frozen and chilled foods rather than lunchtime foods so we're not competing with canteens or dining rooms."
A roll out has not been ruled out.
Somerfield's home shopping service 24-7 is also looking at the potential for work based deliveries after a successful trial last year.
PR manager Louise Turner says: "We're looking at lots of ways to provide the best possible service. If customers want deliveries to their offices, timing will be a key consideration. Frozen and chilled foods will need to be delivered late in the day, unless there is adequate storage."
Apart from positioning some stores in dense office areas, Marks and Spencer has no policy for supplying food to take home. A spokesman said: "In theory an online office service could work, but it's a little early to say as we're still trying out our online grocery shopping service within two postcode districts.
"People in those areas could order food to be delivered to their office if their employers are happy about it."
But do staff really want shops in their offices? As we work longer hours, could the service be used by employers to gloss over the problems of overworked staff?
Director of the Institute for Employment Rights Caroline Jones is in two minds about the benefits of "food from work".
"It's fine if that's what employees want. But if it's to make up for staff working long hours under pressure and not having time to go shopping, that sounds more like just another way of encroaching on people's free time and family life than more choice.
"Do people have time to shop around for cheap and healthy products? Are they becoming machines that arrive home late with ready made meals? That hardly creates the image of a full life."
Nancy Sinclair, adviser at the Institute of Personnel and Development, thinks that developments reflect changes in our lifestyles more than changes in attitudes to work.
"It's not an appropriate way of tackling a very long hours culture, if that's the reason for it," says Sinclair.
"If the purpose of the benefit' is to encourage people to stay in the office, then I doubt that will lead to a more productive and effective workforce, because very long hours damage the company and employees in the long term.
"But it might simply be in response to employee demand because of our changing attitudes to food. We spend less time preparing food and cooking."
So not everyone agrees office based food retailing is progress.
Gareth Jones of food consultancy Longhouse says: "In the archaic Chinese commune system, people working hard all day long were often supplied with or given access to simple part prepared food stuff. So in a way, we're returning to that.
"The standard of ready meals is improving, but could be better if they were less preprocessed. It's encouraging that there are more options, but the idea promoted by marketers that food has to be endlessly faster is a fallacy. "
Jones would like an end to the sandwich culture' which dominates too many workplaces. At Longhouse Jones tries to set an example. The phones are off from 12.30 until 2pm. Staff cook together and talk. "It's the opposite of rushing around and eating on the go," Jones says.
Growing food services offered by employers can benefit employees a random voxpox by The Grocer found workers like the service, particularly those who work long hours or shift patterns, or are based in large isolated offices, manufacturing plants or industrial estates.
But will blue collar workers be left behind? Could the food from work service widen the social exclusion gap in the UK food market? Who will target poor industrial estates, or set up shops with low returns, when they can target Middle England?
The race is on for the work buck, but it is likely to be as unven as the store sector itself.
The one stop office: Outside? It's here The US is blazing the trail for selling everything life requires right there in the office, says Lisa Sandberg
A growing number of American companies are selling groceries, preparing take-out dinners, and offering expanded food services to their stressed out workers. Nearly 12% of the 1,020 top ranking US companies surveyed by Hewitt Associates, a Chicago based management consulting firm, have onsite company stores some selling staple foods and 46 of the 100 companies on Fortune Magazine's Top 100 Companies list offer take-home meals.
"The real growth is coming from the contract managed services people like Sodexho Marriott," says Dr Patrick Kirschling, a professor in the Food Marketing Department of Philadelphia based St Joseph's University.
"These service companies were originally hired by the corporations to do the foodservice, but now they're generating new business by using the same facilities, equipment, and personnel to make meals to go," he adds. "Firms are facing issues of attracting and retaining high performance' employees and are becoming more experimental with benefits," says Dr Mindi Fried, director of the National Work/Life Measurement Project at Boston College.
Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Company is one of the companies blazing the trail by turning its office complexes into mini communities complete with day care centers, doctors, financial advisors, banks, post offices, automobile services, coffee bars, gourmet cafeterias, bakeries, and videos to rent.
At one of Merck's New Jersey locations, the indoor fitness center keeps nearly one-third of the employees in motion and offers massage therapy, yoga and aerobics classes. In-house groups meet regularly to lose weight, study the Bible, or learn Italian.
But these companies are aware that perks alone won't make workers happy. "Amenities are not going to keep someone from leaving a company there is no way," says Sharon Wolkie, director of SmithKline Beecham's Work, Life and Organization Resilience group in the healthcare company's Philadelphia office. "We have lots of great amenities, but what really matters to employees is the quality of their work life, and how they can work efficiently and effectively to get out of here at a decent hour."
Fried is concerned these extras may benefit the company more than the worker, creating longer workdays and co-dependency. "The company takes care of all your needs and so you become dependant on the company...and when everything is taken care of at the workplace, it makes it harder to leave."
Gerald Divaris, real estate developer and owner of Florida based NetP@rk, is taking this trend a step further. He is converting empty shopping malls into hi-tech corporate "supercenters" where companies would share indoor space with onsite services like convenience stores, pharmacies, beauty salons, food courts, extended stay hotels, and even elder care centers and pet kennels.
Divaris makes no secret about the dysfunctional work/family relationship these villages may cause. He jokingly told Fortune: "We're going to keep you there from beginning to end...we've even got a spot to bury you."
Though phrases like "corporate villages", and "lifestyle-friendly companies" are trendy management buzzwords, the company town concept is certainly not new. Employer run communities, which provided everything from foodstores to churches, were common at the turn of the 20th century. The stores within these towns were stereotyped as overpriced, understocked places, where miners and farmers were forced to shop because of their isolated worksites.
But they may have gotten their bad reputation unfairly, according to Professor Crandall Shifflett who teaches history at Virginia State University and has written a book on the subject of mining "towns" in the Southern US.
"Most miners thought the prices were fair and that company stores offered more variety and better quality products than the stores they left at home," he says.
Company stores, however controversial, do provide workers with after-work alternatives to traditional supermarket shopping and meal solutions.
"This is a challenge since most people still don't think about the supermarket as a destination to get a (take-home) meal," says Kirschling.
Some supermarkets are trying to move into the workplace by delivering their groceries to employees at the office or train station, but according to Kirschling this is not yet widespread. "I think that this is going to be an appropriate way of doing things since people spend a lot of time at work," he adds.
{{COVER FEATURE }}
No comments yet