There are really only three serious ways to feed people at work: run a canteen, rely on delivery and nearby cafés, or install managed workplace food infrastructure. Each has a different cost profile, a different operational burden, and a very different employee experience. Here's how they compare in 2026.
Staffed canteen
Best for: large sites (typically 400+ on-site daily) with predictable attendance and a hospitality mandate.
Cost to business: high. Chefs, FOH staff, food cost, waste, equipment maintenance and almost always a per-meal subsidy. Even with a contract caterer, you carry headcount risk and a minimum guarantee.
Operational burden: significant, even when outsourced. The employer still owns the space, the H&S compliance, the relationship and the variance in daily covers.
Employee experience: when it works, it's the gold standard — hot lunch, social space, real chef food. When attendance dips below break-even, quality drops fast and so does usage. Hybrid attendance is the single biggest risk.
Delivery apps and nearby cafés
Best for: city-centre offices with strong food options within a 5-minute walk.
Cost to business: zero direct cost — paid for by staff. But material productive time lost to leaving the building, and morale cost when local prices climb.
Operational burden: none, with no control over quality, consistency or what people actually eat.
Employee experience: variable. Tolerable in Soho. Painful on a business park, science campus or any site with thin food options nearby. Delivery fees add 30–40% to every order, which most people now resent.
Workplace food infrastructure (Compound)
Best for: workplaces from ~50 people up, particularly those with hybrid attendance, limited nearby food, 24/7 operations, or multi-tenant sites where a single canteen will never make sense.
Cost to business: a paid service, with a flexible commercial model — full subsidy, partial subsidy, retail (staff pay), or landlord-funded as a tenant amenity on business and science parks.
Operational burden: very low. Chef-made meals are delivered to site multiple times a week and loaded into the fridge by a designated on-site contact. Snacks and drinks are loaded directly by Compound. Purchases are all app-based.
Employee experience: available all day, every day, regardless of attendance pattern or shift. Doesn't replicate the social ritual of a hot canteen lunch — but for sites that were never going to have a canteen anyway, it's a material upgrade on the status quo.
How to choose
Three questions usually settle it. (1) Do you have 400+ people on-site every day with budget and appetite for hospitality? Build a canteen. (2) Are you in a dense food neighbourhood where staff genuinely enjoy the options nearby? Delivery and cafés are fine. (3) Anything else — hybrid, multi-tenant, suburban, shift-based, or simply underserved? Workplace food infrastructure is almost always the lowest-risk, highest-uptake answer.
If you're not sure which bucket you fall into, Compound runs a free scoping call to talk through headcount, attendance pattern and what would actually get used.
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