Corporate dining in America is alive and well. It is not unusual to have an average of 70% of the employees that work at a facility share lunch with co-workers. Employers support corporate dining for a good reason. The average time an employee takes for lunch outside the workplace ranges from 1 hour and 10 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes. When an employee eats at the corporate dining facility, the average drops to 45 minutes. On a given day, a corporate dining facility will service 110% to 120% of the building population for breakfast, breaks, lunch and dinner.

Corporations also recognize that they are not in the restaurant business and occasionally need assistance in optimizing their operations. The following provides insight into some of those issues:

Speed of Service

Employees want food service management to provide fast, friendly service that complements quality and attractive products. Providing these elements of an in-house dining experience encourages employee loyalty.

Maximizing Convenience

Employees want access to employee dining facilities at all hours. There should be limited or no interaction required between the employee and staff.

Ease of Use

If an employee using the service or vending machine cannot intuitively complete the transaction, immediate frustration and negative comments emerge. This same fact holds true for dining facility employees. Operating the register, closing the day, settlement and other support functions must be easy to understand and simple to use.

Shrinkage

Although there are no industry standards published, our research indicates that there is approximately 5% to 15% loss from vending machine sales and cash registers. A cashless payment system can eliminate shrinkage and increase profits through better accountability.