Most workplace food strategies are inherited rather than designed. The canteen is there because it's always been there. The fruit bowl is there because someone introduced it in 2018. The delivery allowance was added during a return-to-office push and never reviewed. This is a playbook for designing — or redesigning — the strategy on purpose.
Step 1: define what you're trying to do with food
Three goals dominate. (1) Amenity — make sure people can eat on-site. (2) Benefit — give staff a tangible, daily value. (3) Lever — actively influence attendance, wellbeing or specific cohorts (shift workers, anchor days).
Most companies want all three. Most strategies fail because they try to deliver all three with one mechanism.
Step 2: map your real attendance
Daily on-site headcount, by day of week, averaged over a representative quarter. Most teams overestimate. The 'we have 400 people' office is often a 220-cover Tuesday.
Layer on shift patterns and after-hours headcount. These are the people traditional catering doesn't reach.
Step 3: assess the local food market
Within 5 minutes' walk: number of options, average lunch price, queue at peak. Within 15 minutes: same. If both are thin, food provision becomes more important. If the local market is strong, your job is mostly about subsidy and convenience.
Step 4: pick mechanisms by goal
Canteen: only viable at 400+ daily covers with hospitality budget.
Workplace food infrastructure (smart fridge with chef-made meals, app-based purchases, multiple weekly deliveries loaded on-site): the default mechanism for any site under canteen scale, for shift coverage, and for multi-tenant or distributed sites.
Delivery allowance: best as a top-up for occasional team lunches, not as the primary mechanism.
Snack and drink shelf: works at <30 people; doesn't scale up.
Step 5: design subsidy intentionally
Retail (staff pay full price) is fine for small sites. 30–50% per-item subsidy is the sweet spot for benefit and engagement. Fully free works for small teams or critical cohorts (shift workers, on-call medics) but caps at the top.
Use Compound's app-based mechanics to apply subsidies precisely — by cohort, by anchor day, by category.
Step 6: measure what matters
Engagement (unique users / week), not just spend. In-office days per FTE before and after launch. Cited reasons in staff surveys. Exit interview mentions of 'food access'.
Most sites we work with see meaningful movement in 1–2 quarters.
Step 7: iterate
Workplace food isn't set-and-forget. Range, subsidy levels and unit placement should be reviewed quarterly. Compound runs that review with its sites as part of the service.
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