In an era of food trucks and pop-up restaurants, Foodworks is taking corporate-office lunch offerings to the next level. Having launched a program in two office locations in the Denver area, it's now rotating a new restaurant into the spaces each week in order to improve worker satisfaction and raise the visibility of participating eateries.
The Foodworks concept, which debuted in Colorado in September at a location in the Denver Tech Center, is to sign on a group of restaurants and chefs who bring their own food and staff into ready-to-go kitchens in corporate buildings, serve for a week and then move to another building operated by Compass Group, the $40 billion New York-based parent company that is the largest food-service provider in the world. While there are just two Foodworks locations in operation currently in the area — the other is at Vail Resorts’ (NYSE: MTN) corporate headquarters — president Jim Kallas said he plans for 10 to be operating in the metro area by the holiday season this year.
Corporate offices and office buildings have been offering more diverse food options in recent years to workers, from bringing in food trucks to increasing catering to offering pop-up kitchens through a company like Fooda. But where Foodworks pushes the envelope is through its technology-enabled scheduling and its partnering with rising chefs who operate food trucks or stand-alone restaurants whose names help to draw workers into restaurants — and then move on before the concept gets old.
“We follow trends really carefully,” Kallas said of coming up with the idea, which has grown from an original test run in Chicago to now six cities across the United States. “You’ve got to listen to what people want.”
Read more at the Denver Business Journal: https://bit.ly/2Fb62LY
