When employees come to the office, their quest for the perfect lunch can sometimes feel like a frantic scavenger hunt.
Rather than taking a much-needed break, they find themselves pushing their exhausted and hungry brain cells to search for available dining options, calculate the time it takes to get there, find parking, place an order, savor their meal, and hastily return just in time for their next meeting. Alternatively, they may rely on an Uber Eats delivery, paying extra for the convenience that still consumes a precious 20 minutes of their break.
Letting lunch break be an actual break seems like a fleeting desire: after the rush, just as they enter into a food coma, it’s time to resume work again. Not quite ideal, is it?
It’s no secret that, for managers, rested and relaxed employees tend to yield greater productivity and decrease healthcare costs. Successful corporate wellness programs work towards this goal. Removing the stress around food and providing fresh healthy options is a great first step. Here, I spell out how our smart vending fridge can enhance your corporate wellness program by providing 24/7 convenient fresh food.
Solving The Worker’s Dilemma
If employees just have 30 minutes to spare, lunch breaks at the workplace don’t have to be a frantic rush for food. At FoodSpot, we’ve seen how our smart vending fridges serve as a low-cost corporate amenity, benefiting all work environments.
Manufacturing Plant Example:
In manufacturing facilities, especially those situated in industrial neighborhoods, meal options for a 30-minute break may be limited to just a few fast food choices. Moreover, these options may only be available to those on the day shift. By strategically installing FoodSpot smart vending fridges, your employees can conveniently access a wide range of fresh meals, snacks, and beverages at any time. This ensures that their needs are met and enhances overall satisfaction.
- Convenience: Smart vending machines placed near production lines or break areas provide quick access to food and drinks, reducing the time and effort required for employees to go off-site or to designated cafeterias. This convenience improves productivity and helps maintain a steady, uninterrupted workflow.
- Customization: Smart vending machines can be stocked with a range of items tailored to workers’ preferences. This might include energy drinks, protein bars, meal replacement shakes, and other items that align with their physical demands and preferences.
- 24/7 Availability: Blue-collar employees often work shifts, including overnight and weekends. Smart vending machines that operate 24/7 ensure that workers have access to essential items at any time, even when other amenities like on-site cafeterias or nearby restaurants may be closed.
To show their commitment to employee satisfaction, one of our manufacturing plant clients took the initiative to survey their staff’s culinary preferences. The survey covered a range of topics including dietary preferences, favorite international cuisines, food allergies, and whether employees brought lunch or opted for takeout. The overwhelming and enlightening responses provided valuable insights, guiding management in stocking their new FoodSpot microstore.
Regardless of whether they work the morning or swing shift, manufacturing plant employees now have 24/7 access to a diverse menu of freshly prepared foods, ranging from breakfast fruit cups, microwaveable lasagnas, fresh salads, giant subs, and XXL burritos.
Tech Office Example:
While white-collar employees typically have access to cafeterias or nearby food options, smart vending machines can still provide unique benefits that enhance their work experience and overall well-being.
- Healthy Snack Options: Many white-collar employees strive for a healthier lifestyle but often find it challenging to resist unhealthy snacks available in traditional vending machines. Smart vending machines can be stocked with nutritious options like fresh fruit cups, salads, yogurts, granola bars, and herbal teas, encouraging healthier eating habits. These options can improve employees’ health and reduce health care costs for your organization.
- Time Efficiency: Office workers often have busy schedules and limited time for breaks. Placing smart vending machines near common areas, meeting rooms, or even individual offices allows employees to grab a quick snack or beverage without wasting time waiting in long lines at the cafeteria or leaving the premises.
- Flexibility: The 24/7 operation of the FoodSpot smart fridge ensures that employees never have to worry about missing catered lunches. If they’re tied up in meetings or engrossed in a project, they can still enjoy fresh and nutritious meals whenever they find time.
- Tech Integration: Smart vending machines can leverage modern technology to provide a seamless experience for white-collar employees and increase employee engagement. For instance, they can integrate with employee ID cards or mobile apps, enabling tax-free payroll deductions, personalized recommendations, or even tracking health-related metrics like calorie intake or hydration levels.
One of our hospital clients installed a FoodSpot smart fridge right inside their main cafe’s dining area. Why? Once the cafe closes at 2 pm, this allows the rest of hospital staff and residents to access fresh food favorites, stocked daily by the cafe.
Not only has this been a game changer for afternoon and ‘noc’ shift staff, but the hospital subsidizes each department with monthly stipends. With the success of this amenity, our client has plans to expand and install more smart fridges throughout the various buildings on their large campus, to reduce walking time and provide even more great food access for their employees.
By catering to the needs of both kinds of work environments, smart vending machines offer a cost-effective corporate amenity that improves convenience, promotes healthier choices, and enhances overall employee satisfaction.
But Wait, There’s More!
Let’s dive deeper into how our Dashboard and Smartphone app work in sync and aid management’s goals to feed their staff with healthier options. A vending machine is not just another corporate food program. Enter tech…
By utilizing FoodSpot’s software, companies can incentivize their employees to create accounts on their customized smartphone app by rewarding each person with meal credits. This kind of reward system is a great way to boost team morale and can be offered on an as-needed basis.
Incentivizing Healthier Eating
Discount page of the FoodSpot dashboard
Want to incentivize your employees to eat healthier options? Why not introduce and offer the Nicoise Salad for 30% off? Whether it’s a one-off deal or a weekly ongoing campaign, in less than a minute, you can launch promotions easily from your Dashboard, and send out a blast notification to all your employees.
Who’s Looking After the Food?
The flexibility of FoodSpot’s food system management means you can keep your microstores stocked in a number of ways. Some companies, such as our hospital clients, already have an in-house cafe that produces fresh entrees, sushi, and pastries daily. Since production is already in motion, it’s not a stretch to produce just a few more staff favorites to stock up.
Other organizations that might not have an in-house commissary prefer to outsource from their favorite local caterers, giving them access to stock the fridge via an operator smart phone app. This gives the vendor full ownership over the menu. From your fingertips, you can easily view who, what, where and when food items are placed in your microstore, and which expired items are removed. Our system identifies and timestamps each delivery.
The other great stock-up option can be a mix ‘n match combination of trusted food vendors plus prepared foods bought from, say, Costco. We see this occurring most often in offices, where an admin coordinates with trusted vendors and combines with orders from InstaCart. Each of our fridges has the capability to house over 140 items so, when you have multiple units on-premise, that’s a lot of room for breakfast, lunch, snack, and comfort food, not to mention drinks and tasty desserts!
FoodSpot x Your Corporate Wellness Program
Improving health through nutrition should be a part of every successful corporate wellness program.
Enhance employees’ food experiences (and experiences in general) with FoodSpot’s microstores. Offer food to all employees at any time. Send rewards that increase employee engagement and improve health outcomes. Launch FoodSpot, and your employees will thank you.
If you are in search of corporate wellness partners that empower your organization with 24/7 fresh food accessibility, reach out to us.
