Ciao, chow

Hello, interesting entrees. In this tight labor market, some companies are putting their money where their mouth is, the cafeteria, and replacing mystery meat with quiche, sushi and other culinary delights.

By KATHERINE SNOW SMITH

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 11, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- The menu includes herb-crusted tuna, Asian noodles in a Szechuan sauce and tequila chicken salad. Breads are homemade, and wraps come in a variety of colors. The room is industrial chic: white can lights, exposed pipes and metal amid a patchwork of tangerine, kiwi, royal blue and corn silk-color walls and ceiling.

This is not the latest restaurant in Ybor City or trendy South Tampa. It's simply called the Commissary. But Home Shopping Network's recently revamped employee cafeteria gives a whole new meaning to eating at work.

The television merchant teamed up with its food management company last year, with each investing $250,000 to upgrade the St. Petersburg company's cafeteria to offer a fresher look and better food.

Since it reopened in January, sales at the new and improved Commissary are up 20 percent, and the cafeteria operates with no additional subsidy from HSN.

"This is my best meal of the day," said John Walker, a scenic technician who works on the network's sets. "I get something that's balanced. They have a little bit of everything."

With the tight labor market and intense competition to recruit and retain employees, big companies around Tampa Bay are adding or enhancing employee dining. Mystery meat and mayonnaise-drenched tuna salad sandwiches are giving way to menus laden with Cajun wraps, pesto cream, adobe chicken, caramelized onions and sushi.

Fashionable yet affordable cafeterias are becoming one of the perks that employees expect at the big customer-service centers that keep popping up in Tampa. Capital One and Citigroup have them. On Friday, Chase Manhattan Bank gave guests a preview of the cafeteria that will open this week in its new facility in the Fountain Square office park.

Chase's 10,000-square-foot facility is called the Waterfront Cafe, a name chosen by employees because it has a view of the park's lake. Workers will have a choice of hot meals, deli items, salads and sushi. They can even call for takeout to pick up on their way home.

Scrambling for workers in a tight job market, Chase will subsidize the cost of the food, according to Gene Marshall, senior vice president of Chase BankCard Services Inc.

"There aren't a lot of inexpensive places to go to eat in the Westshore area," he said. "The cafeteria was one of the many things our employees said they wanted in the building."

For the companies, there's another benefit: Having a popular eating area on-site helps productivity. "Workers don't come back late from lunch," Marshall said.

That's part of the rationale at Raymond James Financial in St. Petersburg's Feather Sound area.

"You want to have places where people can meet and eat and exchange ideas and you want food that can attract them," chief executive Tom James said. The 2,600-employee brokerage firm has a cafeteria and a pizzeria. "It is in our best interest not to have them go elsewhere." Traders, especially, can't leave their desks for long lunches.

Raymond James' cafeteria is decorated with photos of the Buccaneers and Raymond James Stadium. The daily offerings may range from pork roast and pesto pasta to quiche and a fajitas bar. The smaller pizzeria serves gourmet pizzas, calzones and pasta. Most meals cost $1.75 to $5. The New York-based food service company that runs the operation, Lackmann Food Service Inc., also caters many Raymond James meetings and special events. Raymond James subsidizes the operation indirectly by paying about $2,600 a month toward overhead.

Unlike many brokerage houses, especially those in New York, Raymond James has no executive dining room, so everybody breaks bread together. The same goes for Home Shopping Network.

"We want to have a place that's attractive for everyone," said Mike Fiato, manager of HSN's cafeteria.

Fiato works for Eurest Dining, a Charlotte, N.C., food management company that serves such national accounts as Microsoft and General Motors and bay area companies including GTE, Tech Data and Eckerd Corp. He knows his industry hasn't always been known for providing culinary delights, but he says the image is quickly changing.

"The NBC commissary was always a joke for Johnny Carson," Fiato said. "Now we hear people complimenting their cafeteria and bringing family and friends in."

Home Shopping's cafeteria has nine food stations, each with a set menu and daily specials. The "menutainment" station features exhibition cooking each day, with a chef whipping up anything from barbecue chicken salad to stir fry over Asian noodles. Like many other cafeterias, Home Shopping also serves breakfast for its early shifts.

Fiato estimates 1,200 to 1,500 diners go through each day. The company employs 4,000.

"It's more relaxing to eat here," said Gloryvee Ortiz, who works in quality control.

"I eat here every day," said her dining companion, Jackie Watson. They both agreed the price, menu and convenience are preferable to fighting the traffic to venture out to Burger King or McDonald's.

Of course, many company cafeterias still offer soggy steam table fare. But in some workplace cafeterias the meals are prepared by culinary school graduates and chefs who left behind bad hours and poor benefits at restaurants and resorts for a five-day workweek at corporate America. The chef at Raymond James came from Innisbrook Resort and is known for soups, from lobster bisque to creamy chicken and yam.

It takes culinary training and experience to keep the menu varied.

"Most of our customers on Friday are our customers on Monday," said Eric Fox, regional manager for Eurest's Florida operations. "We try to get people in three to four days a week."

Fox estimates his company's cafeteria prices are 20 percent to 30 percent lower than "what's out there on the street." Some companies provide a direct subsidy to make such prices possible, but at larger companies with a captive clientele corporate, cafeterias can get by on their own.

An annual survey conducted by the Washington-based Society for Human Resource Management found 30 percent of 600 companies polled this year offered a subsidized cafeteria. The percentage was the same in a 1998 survey.

"I think the number of companies providing cafeteria and food service has stayed about the same, but I think they are trying to make an effort to offer a better selection and better type of cafeteria," group spokeswoman Kristin Accipiter said.

Of large companies with more than 5,000 employees, 63 percent had cafeterias. Only 7 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees offered them. High technology and education sectors reported the highest percentage as an industry, with 50 percent and 56 percent, respectively, offering cafeterias.

The economics of a company cafeteria usually make sense only for businesses that aren't close to an array of affordable restaurants and have 500 employees or more to draw from.

But computer distributor Tech Data makes it a corporate policy to offer the same hot food at its distribution sites across the country, which have an average of 175 employees, as can be found in the four cafeterias at its 3,000-employee Clearwater headquarters. Each cafeteria is subsidized, although the company would not reveal the cost.

"If we expect people to work hard and do the things we ask of them, than it's incumbent upon us is to provide a way for them to recharge their batteries and relax," said Ben Godwin, Tech Data's vice president of real estate and corporate services.

Typically, diners spend less than $5 on a meal and a drink. "We make sure with our pricing reviews that they can buy a burger cheaper here than elsewhere," Godwin said.

Cheaper, that is, than at a sit-down restaurant such as Applebee's. "It's hard to beat a 99-cent Big Mac," Godwin said.

-- Times staff writer Kyle Parks and Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.

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