There were a few reports towards the end of last year that interested us - detailing the time of the average lunch break in the UK. And, you can guess from the title, 22 minutes is all we take to buy and eat our lunch, never mind resting or re-energising for the afternoon ahead.
It is claimed, via several reports and surveys, that lunchtimes have fallen by a third in the last 6 years, compared with the average 33-minute lunch break back in 2012.
Today, high demands and an increasingly volatile economic landscape have rendered the concept of lunch hours obsolete in most offices, with the average Brit now taking just 22 minutes for their midday break, new research claims (The Independent, October 2018).
As a catering business, we were interested on a number of levels - health being top of the list. Taking a break from your screens or focused work is really important. We remember the days when people used to go the gym in their lunch break or shopping or meet a friend for coffee. If time is really that pressured, then maybe having good, nutritional, tasty, brain food delivered to the workplace is the answer?
The article in the Independent confirmed this "...there simply weren’t enough dining options nearby, leaving them to resort to desk-side meals they would've presumably brought in from home or purchased from a supermarket."
We regularly feed the workers of many local businesses, of all sizes. We get special requests for luxury, healthy, vegetarian (increasingly) and regular platters of food that will sustain people through meetings, presentations and other group situations. We're thinking - why don't our customers offer a buffet service for a nominal charge at least once a week so their teams can be well-fed, stay focused and energised and not have to leave the building? In the summer, this option could include outdoor buffets with added natural vitamin D.
A happy, well-fed workforce is vital for so many things but, from a commercial point of view, productivity has to be reflected when its people have had a proper break and been well looked after. Talk to us some more about this.