Forkable | Blog Blog

The food sector continues to evolve as advancing technology offers new opportunities for growth and innovation. The incorporation of automation and digitalization into the operations of food businesses has changed the game for everything from grocery shopping to dining out.

How offices handle team lunches is changing, too, for the better. While traditional catering services still exist, more and more companies choose to offer something beyond a few trays of mediocre buffet food. Future-oriented, pro-employee offices are placing more importance on convenience, flexibility, individual preferences, food quality, and health for company subsidized lunches. 

For those who haven’t made the switch yet, due to fears around cost and time investment, we’re debunking some common myths about sponsoring office lunches.

1. Putting together an office lunch is time-consuming for admins.

Admins and executive assistants will tell you that the work involved in planning and coordinating office lunches can be a nightmare. But that was before. These days, with intelligent software, admins don’t have to lift a finger to get food delivered to the office.

Forkable, a smart office lunch delivery service, allows each employee to set up an account and specify individual food preferences, from the ingredients used to the type of cuisine, as well as any allergies or intolerances. Forkable’s lunch bot automatically selects appropriate meals for each user based on their preferences, then delivers all the individually packaged and labeled meals to the office at the same time, so the team can eat together. If anyone is craving something in particular, they can take the reigns back from the algorithm and override the meal suggestion through their individual account. Admins never have to get involved! It’s fast and easy, increasing the team’s productivity and saving admins the hassle of selecting a restaurant, collecting orders, working with a caterer, thinking about headcount, and worrying about allergies and dietary preferences.

2. Buffet-style catering is the best way to go 

It’s not. Traditional buffet-style catering offers a limited selection of food, takes time to coordinate, and often results in over- or under-ordering food. Services like Forkable, which provide employees with individual lunches, allow customization, consider individual preferences, and adjust the number of meals ordered daily to match the number of employees in the office. Everyone gets what they want and food waste is reduced. 

3. You can’t make everybody happy

You wouldn’t settle for providing subpar experiences to your customers and you don’t need to settle for providing subpar lunches to your employees. It is possible to make everyone happy. With individual, customizable lunches you can have hundreds of unique meals show up at the office every day. Employees don’t have to settle for food they don’t like. Best of all, with Forkable this is all possible with no time investment from admins.

4. It’s expensive

Good lunches don’t have to be expensive. Because individual lunch services like Forkable allow companies to order the exact right amount of food, and avoid the over-ordering and food waste that comes with traditional catering, companies are able to save money while improving employee lunch services. The larger the company, the greater the fluctuation in daily office headcount with vacations, sick days, employees working from home, and business travel. With individual lunches, there is no need to estimate a daily headcount — employees who need a meal opt in for one and those who don’t need a meal don’t opt in. Avoiding spending money on wasted food is that simple.

5. You don’t have a lot of healthy food options

One of the best things about modern corporate lunch catering services is the variety of options they offer. While traditional catering makes you pick from a single menu, newer food business models give you access to hundreds of local restaurants, so you can pick exactly what you want. This technology also helps users avoid eating unhealthy foods through app settings and a profile-based algorithm.

With Forkable, you can easily set up your account and input your food and diet preferences to match your needs. With its intelligent learning platform, it’s able to suggest meals according to your profile. What’s more, you can set it up so it doesn’t suggest meals that are unhealthy, keeping them out of mind altogether. By choosing your lunches for the week ahead of time, you can avoid impulse ordering unhealthy foods.

There are myriad reasons to try Forkable and no reason not to. Forkable never has any contracts and never requires any commitment from its users, so you’re welcome to try it out for a day or a week and see all the benefits first-hand!