Our return-to-work policy is three days a week which has ballooned our food service subsidy. Are there creative solutions?

This has become a hot topic for corporate dining and food service operations in the post-pandemic world. There are a variety of solutions that operators have come up with to mitigate loss and manage subsidies because of variable populations. For example, utilizing innovative technology has been a popular solution that seems to be gaining traction. Grab and Go models with self-checkout such as Amazon Go are being used more frequently to reduce labor costs on slow days. Heat mapping, waste tracking and pre-ordering are other tools that we have seen implemented to improve efficiency during quieter times. Consistent evaluation of sales and menu engineering also need to be done to ensure product is ordered based on population level. Operators and their clients need to be in constant communication about policy changes and organizational expectations regarding on-site population.