The Corporate Way To the Worker's Heart

COMPANY MEALS The Corporate Way To the Worker's Heart

Eggs a la Russe with Caviar . . . southern Bisque . . . Baked Stuffed Filet of Sole Marguery, Parslied Potatoes, Harvard Beets . . . Combination Salad . . . Rhubarb-Strawberry Pie . . . Coffee.

SO read the luncheon menu at one of Manhattan's newest and biggest restaurants last week. Price of the meal: 97-c-. Owner of the restaurant: Socony Mobil Oil Co., which installed a cafeteria and seven dining rooms in its Manhattan headquarters to give 2,400 employees bargain food at a sizable loss to itself every month. Operated by the Brass Rail Restaurant (on a cost-plus fee basis), the dining rooms are graded according to rank, with white-collar workers in one room, various executive echelons in the others. All rooms are air-conditioned, have piped-in music, and are pleasantly decorated (some in rosewood paneling, one with a pigskin leather floor). The kitchen is one of the world's largest all-electric cookeries, has a refrigerated room to keep all scraps. Socony's restaurant is probably the most luxurious example of a growing trend in U.S. business. Last year 41,000 companies served some 23 million meals each working day to their employees, spent more than $3 billion on food, equipment and service. Says a Joseph E. Seagram & Sons executive: "We look upon it as a necessary function of our industrial-relations program--just like clean rest rooms, or a pleasant, well-lighted place to work."

Some businessmen believe that what and where a worker eats is his own affair. They say that company lunch programs are paternalistic, that it is good for employees to get away from the job briefly, that dining rooms and cafeterias waste company capital and space--to say nothing of the headaches they bring. But as industry decentralizes to rural areas, restaurants for workers are few and, far between. In crowded cities, where drugstore counters are jammed and restaurant food is either poor or expensive, the problem is just as bad.

A study by Yale University's Dr. Howard Haggard showed that in-plant meals cut down afternoon fatigue and help speed production. Workers who once took an hour for lunch outside can eat in half an hour inside, get off earlier at day's end. Many companies report other benefits. One Indiana steel mill said that five nearby saloons had to shut down after it opened a good cafeteria, while the Prudential Insurance Co. found that nutritional deficiencies among its office help--especially young girl workers, who leaned heavily on soda-and-cruller lunches--have almost disappeared. Chicago's Encyclopaedia Britannica reported that the output of its office force has increased 300% in the past five years, with only a 60% increase in employees, attributes a good part of the gain to its cafeteria program. Other corporations find that a company dining room helps executives keep abreast of what is going on in other departments, also brings workers closer to the company.

When Motorola installed a round-the-clock cafeteria in its Chicago plant, it was pleasantly surprised that entire families patronized it to save money and eat better than at home. Says an executive of a San Francisco firm, which serves a roast-beef dinner for 57-c-: "You give everybody a $5 monthly raise, and in six months they've all forgotten about it. But they eat here every day and they don't forget." Many unions, which once frowned on plant cafeteria programs as unwanted paternalism, now realize that they benefit workers; some even demand a lunch program in the contract as a fringe benefit.

Kielbasa & 39-c- Steak. Most plants try to avoid repeating menus more than once every two or three weeks, pay attention to workers' preferences, and have extras for special occasions. Cleveland's Thompson Products has a steak dinner ($1.50) every payday; Chrysler has kielbasa for workers of Polish descent. Pittsburgh's H. J. Heinz Co. has imported Swiss, German and Austrian chefs, encourages recipes from employees. Average check at Heinz: 33-c- for production-line workers (who often bring part of their lunch from home), 53-c- for executives and white-collar workers.

The dining rooms vary in decor. For 55,000 workers at its Seattle plant, Boeing Airplane Co. runs an enormous mess hall that concentrates on low-cost food (steak with French fries: 39-c-). Baltimore's McCormick & Co., one of the world's biggest spice firms, takes the opposite tack, with a wood-paneled colonial tea-and-dining room decorated with a ship model made of cloves; the waitresses wear 18th century costumes. One of the handsomest company rooms is at General Motors' new Technical Center near Detroit, where 4,500 employees eat in an air-conditioned glass and stainless-steel world designed by Architect Eero Saarinen. San Francisco's Bank of America and Western Electric Co.'s Cleveland plant have lounges with TV or hi-fi sets and card tables for after-lunch relaxation; St. Louis' McDonnell Aircraft even imports baseball players, singers and theater stars to entertain.

In-plant meals can be an expensive proposition. Monsanto Chemical Co., which has had a cafeteria for 28 years, manages to break even. But most other company-run programs are in the red, Reynolds Metals absorbs a big part of the food costs annually for 1,100 Louisville workers. Thompson Products lost $61,000 last year serving employees 7,000 meals daily; Ford figures the loss at around 8-c- per customer to feed 3,000 workers at the Dearborn main headquarters. Part of the reason for the loss is that industrial firms must pay plant union wages and fringe benefits, which sometimes come to $2.50 an hour for the most menial kitchen help. A bigger problem is that most executives do not know how to supervise food expenses.

Profit & Loss. Company restaurants can break even, or, better yet, be turned over to caterers. Chicago's Nationwide catering company has 217 clients (among them: Western Union, General Electric, General Motors, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) scattered around the U.S., needs a staff of 4,500 to handle all the business. Cleveland's United Food Management Services runs 190 cafeterias serving some 250,000 people every day. Caterers not only handle all complaints--and, incidentally, keep food from becoming a union-management problem--but can also buy and prepare food more efficiently. Nationwide knows that heavy-production workers need up to 6,000 calories daily, while office workers should have more salads; that Easterners like their coffee strong and black, while Westerners want it weaker and with cream.

Caterers work on either a guarantee-against-loss contract or a straight profit deal. For small firms (fewer than 500 workers), or for those who want spectacular meals at rock-bottom prices, the guaranteed contract is best; the caterer gets a fixed fee (usually 5% of sales), is also reimbursed for any losses. Bigger companies with less ambitious plans take a straight profit deal. Either way, the savings are impressive. Western Electric cut an $8,000 loss a year to $1400 by turning over its cafeteria to a caterer.

While U.S. businessmen are anxious to boost their eating programs out of the red, they also realize that one sure way to a worker's heart is through his stomach. If the cost runs into a few thousand dollars each year, it is still a small enough price to pay. As Thompson Products General Service Manager John F. Schindler says: "Our main job is to provide quality food. Food and the dispensary are more important to workers than anything--more important than labor contracts. You can have the best contract in the world, but if the food is poor, you have trouble."

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