REWORKING THE MENU
As workers return in pandemic’s wake, cafeterias look at ways to adapt services
The lunch options are numerous for Connecticut office workers, whether at delis around the corner or in corporate cafeterias like those overseen nationally by Joe Ganci, president of corporate services for Sodexo’s North America operations.
In many of its facilities, the foodservices giant offers a literal smorgasbord of daily fare — hot lunch or salad choices — that people can customize in ways that many restaurants do not duplicate. The challenge for Ganci and others like him going forward is to alter those features to reflect new realities while making sure variety and flexibility don’t leave the menu for the noontime office gourmand.
In releasing its “road map” for reopening Connecticut establishments disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, a committee convened by Gov. Ned Lamont omitted any reference to cafeterias — a major hub of the school and working day that have considerations distinct from their restaurant cousins.
Vendors such as Sodexo have been left largely to their own devices to figure out new operating models.
Even the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has provided little more than cursory guidance. Industry leaders have been consumed during the shutdown with devising strategies for reopening.
“You can expect self-serve operations will probably be shuttered in the beginning and maybe for the longer term, and you’ll see more ‘grab-and-go’ opportunities,” said John Zillmer, CEO of Philadelphiabased Aramark, which, along with Paris-based Sodexo and Compass Group, based in the United Kingdom, form the industry’s big three providers.
“We’ll facilitate customer orders, both from a mobile application perspective,” Zillmer said. “And situations may exist where customers are slotted into service times and periods to maintain social distancing and service flexibility.”
The industry is adopting restaurant theories for deep cleaning, screening employees and the layout
of dining areas — including the addition of more outdoor seating where possible — and developing digital platforms to speed service and segment the traditional noon stampede by designating windows for office tenants or work groups to come through for lunch.
Ganci agreed that salad bars and other self-serve buffets will be eliminated temporarily in many places.
In workplace cafeterias, however, it is the made-to-order stations that are the real magnets. Ganci said, there too, a new need for speed brought on by distancing measures will necessitate some changes.
“The trick is going to be ... when you are looking at how can you get more people through the space, how can you do that efficiently?” Ganci said. “You can’t get into a situation where you are giving the customer 30 choices each of each item. If you are doing some kind of a pasta toss, you use one pasta and maybe two sauces and two proteins, and those are the choices. That can be very efficient — it can be done in batches, so you are still getting the theater, you are still getting the food made in front of you, but it’s a much faster throughout for the customer.”
‘Environments that don’t feel alien’
Sodexo, Aramark and Compass Group have been scrambling to realign their facilities to create space between diners, and to adjust how their staff serve food and cleanse surfaces. Stamford-based Centerplate — the fifth largest food-service operator — faces a daunting prospect as well, in re-imagining how it will handle concessions at sports stadiums and cater big convention centers.
Aramark has produced a general “reopening” strategy — part of which has included converting a uniform manufacturing facility in Mexico to producing face masks and other personal protective equipment for its workers. Zillmer also has promised to create custom plans for each location the company operates.
Compass Group CEO Dominic Blakemore said a challenge is to maintain an inviting atmosphere in office cafeterias.
“It means the safe social distancing to dine — and importantly, it also means how we create environments that don’t feel alien but feel comfortable,” Blakemore said. “We’re working with a lot of our clients at the moment as to how that can be achieved.
“There’s going to be an acceleration in digital, so we will see every client asking for cashless, pre-order ... desk drop, grab and go, click and collect — anything which takes the congregation of people out of the system, and (adds) more personalized meals on a one-to-one basis, as opposed to the buffet,” Blakemore said. “We think that digital has got a strong role to play in that.”
Green light on hand hygiene
Cleanliness is the best comfort any food service purveyor can immediately convey. To that end, Sodexo this week established a medical advisory council led by Dr. John Boyce of Middletown, a former director of epidemiology and infection control for Yale-New Haven Hospital.
The Sodexo council will develop new standards for how the company delivers food services at office buildings, schools, hospitals, senior communities and other venues.
In addition to pandemic and epidemiology experts, others on the council will come from fields including nutrition, family medicine, behavioral health and occupational health.
Boyce declined comment this week on his appointment and plans for the group. But he has focused some of his work in the past few years consulting on hand hygiene. The parent company of Purell posted an interview with Boyce three years ago addressing how hospitals can automate the process of ensuring staffers wash hands frequently, rather than relying on exclusively on supervisors to monitor compliance.
Boyce noted some systems include “counters” in hand dispensers to help managers determine how often they are used. Better yet are electronic badges that beep an audible cue for workers to wash hands periodically. A Michigan company called BioVigil sells such a device, marketed originally for hospitals, which lights up in green the outline of a hand to signify the wearer has scrubbed within an allotted period of time. The light turns to yellow and then red as any allotted deadline has passed.
“Perhaps the best information that we’re going to have on hand hygiene practices would be to use a combination of direct observation and automated monitoring,” Boyce said in the Purell post. “You use direct observation as a more qualitative measure of hand hygiene, and then you use the automated methods as your main quantitative measure.”