Something significant happened last month: Deliveroo surveyed employees and 70% said nutrition was the most important thing about workplace food, rating it twice as highly as gym subsidies. This shift signals that workplace food has moved away from being a nice-to-have perk to becoming a must-have strategic investment for high performing companies, with measurable returns: 

Nutrition and Performance 

The connection between what employees eat and how they perform is increasingly supported by research. Today we are seeing organizations use three evidence-based approaches: 

• Personalized nutrition platforms connect employees with healthy meal plans based on your own health goals and cultural preferences, via apps.  

• Choice architecture applies psychology to food service, using visual cues to highlight healthier options and designing portion sizes that prevent energy crashes without restricting options. 

• Gamified wellness turns healthy eating into competitive challenges through apps that track nutrition goals and reward sustainable choices.     

Collaboration and Productivity  

Shared meals are a mechanism for building stronger working relationships. Companies are currently testing several approaches: 

• Matching platforms connect colleagues for meals using smart scheduling and conversation prompts, encouraging cross-departmental connections. 

• Pop-up experiences, such as baristas, themed cuisine and restaurant partnerships create memorable moments that drive interactions between colleagues and movement through buildings. 

• Group dining innovation, for example Sprint Tables, facilitate team building by pre-ordering food to drop at specific tables at set times.  

Efficiency and Cost Reductions 

Automation addresses both cost and waste. AI-powered helps reduce food waste through forecasting. 

• Foodles, a French smart fridge company, reports 12% food waste versus 29% industry average through predictive analytics.  

• Smart refrigeration units automatically restock popular items, rotate stock by expiration dates and provide sreal-time inventory tracking, reducing staffing requirements while maintaining 24/7 availability. 

Real Estate Optimization 

Traditional cafeterias take up a lot of space, more intelligent distribution frees up more space: 

• Micro-markets and distributed service points take up less space and bring food directly to workers and working areas.  

• Less space for traditional cafeterias means more space for desks or meeting rooms and other typologies, while creating movement and flow around the building and reducing time lost queuing in a cafeteria. 

The Business Case 

What we are not seeing yet is clear evidence showing that ‘Company X implemented smart fridges and choice architecture and their EBITDA went up Y%.’. But the trend is clear, workplace food has gone from feeding employees to becoming a strategic investment with multiple ROI vectors.