"Offering lunch as a benefit gives companies the opportunity to attract and retain top talent, while building a stronger, more collaborative company culture," said Rodrigo Santibáñez, founder of EAT Club. "Lunch as a benefit boosts employee morale and improves productivity. There is a clear trend among companies to offer lunch programs, and employers in strong urban centers like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and now New York, find the EAT Club service to be a great solution."
In May, EAT Club announced that it raised $30 million, led by strategic investor Sodexo, a food services and facilities management company, to fund expansion to New York City. "We appreciate the innovation that can come from a start-up model and have prioritized ways to adapt these key learnings to better serve our clients," said Mark Bickford, CEO of Corporate Services, Sodexo North America. "EAT Club's strong business model and technology platform make them a good strategic fit for us. We are excited to learn from their success, particularly in helping us enhance flexibility and agility, and ultimately increase growth in this important market."
According to a survey that the company conducted among more than 1,000 professionals at all levels, 70 percent of respondents said that a curated, delivered lunch would make them more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work. Companies would benefit from an estimated 150 percent ROI for providing lunch; by improving employee happiness and loyalty through the service and encouraging teamwork, raising retention rates and supporting future recruitment efforts.
The New York launch welcomes companies from 10-1,000 employees to become members of EAT Club and offer lunch as a benefit to employees. EAT Club's goal is to improve corporate culture by enhancing collaboration with diverse culinary offerings tailored to employees' individual dietary preferences and tastes.
EAT Club's members provide employees with the option to choose from this diverse, curated menu of food options through EAT Club's website or mobile app. Meals can be ordered as far as a week in advance and up to 10 a.m. local time the day of delivery, and are prepared fresh by the local culinary team before being delivered to each individual office by noon.
EAT Club's expansive culinary offering was created by an exclusive team of talented chefs catering to a sophisticated, global palate. Employees can choose from a variety of mouthwatering items to suit their individual preferences and palates. Items include Beef Short Rib Burrito Bowls, Tex Mex Shrimp Salad, Soba Noodle Bowls with Tuna, BBQ Chicken Sandwiches and Antipasto Prosciutto Platters. Additional variety and local flavor is added to the menu with specialty items prepared by local New York City restaurant partners including Just Salad and Potbelly, among others.
EAT Club has successfully delivered more than 10 million meals to employees in San Francisco and Los Angeles since its 2010 launch. The company's focus on logistics enables its 99.7% on-time delivery, while an easy to navigate platform makes administration easy. Member companies have the option to choose between a fully subsidized or a lunch money program, where employees can use money toward their lunches on a daily or weekly cadence.
"The EAT Club system makes it so easy for our employees to choose what they want to eat from a wide variety of options -- even the morning of the meal," said Karla Patterson of Udacity. "Their customer service is awesome too!"
EAT Club has additional plans for expansion underway in other cities throughout the United States. For more information about how EAT Club is changing the way companies lunch, visit www.eatclub.com.
About EAT Club
EAT Club was founded in 2010 by Kevin Yang and Rodrigo Santibanez and inspired by Japanese bento boxes and the Dabbawala delivery system in India with a hunger to solve the office lunch problem. Kevin and Rodrigo started EAT Club by applying technology to power a new delivery system and business model to make it easy for office managers to deliver employees a more individualized office lunch experience by ordering personalized meals at scale to suit everyone's palate. EAT Club leverages a massive food supply network, including professional chefs, a proprietary tech-powered delivery and logistics platform, and a large selection of meal options, to satisfy everyone's lunchtime craving and power the team at offices with 10-1000 employees. For more on EAT Club, visit: www.eatclub.com.
About Sodexo USA
Sodexo North America is part of a global, Fortune 500 company with a presence in 80 countries. Sodexo is a leading provider of integrated food, facilities management and other services that enhance organizational performance, contribute to local communities and improve quality of life of 15 million customers in corporate, education, healthcare, senior living, sports and leisure, government and other environments daily. The company employs 133,000 people at 13,000 sites in all 50 U.S. states and Canada and indirectly supports tens of thousands of additional jobs through its annual purchases of $9.2 billion in goods and services from small to large American businesses. In support of local communities across the U.S., the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation has contributed close to $30 million over the past 20 years to help feed children in America impacted by hunger. To learn more about Sodexo, visit SodexoInsights.com and connect with us on Facebook and @SodexoUSA on Twitter.
SOURCE EAT Club
Related Links
http://www.eatclub.com
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