When you think about an easy work lunch, what comes to mind? Perhaps it's a chopped salad with a side of bread. Or maybe a turkey sandwich with a bag of chips sounds more filling. No matter what you imagined, the meal was most likely made at home and brought into the office.
But lunch should be easier than something that requires extensive meal prep. With DoorDash for Business, it can be. Our meal platform lets you give your team a budget to purchase food at work, so they can forget about meal prep and return to enjoying their weekend.
Here's how DoorDash for Business makes lunch easy.
Why your team can't skip lunch
Over the past few years, most people believed or internalized modern workplace tropes. Some would preach "rise and grind" over work-life balance. Others would suggest "work hard, play hard" trumps some downtime.
In fact, regular breaks have become such a pariah in the corporate world that almost 2 in 3 Millennials admit to skipping lunch to get ahead at work.
Even though companies, on the surface, may benefit from a seemingly dedicated workforce, there are downsides when employees skip lunch or take mental breaks.
Research says that skipping lunch causes mental fatigue and poor memory. Your body craves nutrients, and by depriving it of a midday meal, your blood sugar drops, leaving your hungry employees feeling sleepy, weak, and even disoriented. These are all adjectives you wouldn't use to describe a high-performing employee.
Naturally, encouraging regular lunch breaks can have the opposite effect. It improves energy levels, increases creativity, and even boosts productivity in the final hours of the workday. What's more, you tend to see these positive effects compound when employees step away from their desks for lunch, whether to eat with colleagues somewhere else in the office or offsite.
Lunch ideas you can pack at home
To recap: lunch is important. But how can you make it a painless process? After all, eating isn't the hard part. It's making lunch that takes time, and most people only have so much time to spare.
DoorDash for Business, of course, can help, but if your team insists on packing lunch at home, they can always fall back on a few classic lunches.
Few foods say quintessential lunch more than salads and sandwiches. Besides being relatively healthy, they're both portable as well. You can travel with a sandwich or salad in Tupperware without too much fear that either will be crushed. And when lunch comes around, you can eat your salad at your desk, in the cafeteria, or in the park. These are great options where you’re never bound to a microwave or a table with a fork and knife.
Plus, they offer a ton of variety. You can have a Greek salad, Caesar salad, or even fajita salad. It's an endless list, and sandwiches are just the same.
So naturally, you can't go wrong with salads or sandwiches. But if you're feeling a bit more adventurous, there are plenty of other "easy" work lunches you can make at home. Bowls, for one, have emerged as a familiar and easy homemade lunch. You can take a bowl in any direction, too, from a Chipotle-inspired bowl with all the fixings to something healthier like a buddha bowl.
All these are delicious options, but it begs the question, are they easy? Easy implies minimal time and effort. When you look at some recent studies, the average American spends between 37 minutes and an hour each day on meal prep.
Make work lunches easy with DoorDash for Business
The good news is DoorDash for Business has several options for you to make lunch easy, efficient, and delicious for your team.
1. Give an individual meal
Expensed Meal Credits let you give your team a budget to purchase food on DoorDash. You can set these budgets as a one-time treat for ad-hoc events or as a recurring benefit to encourage your team to take a break each day. And since you control the budget amounts, you never have to worry about someone spending too much.
And, for your team, they can use their budget on whatever they're craving that day, even if that's still a sandwich and salad.
2. Place a Group Order
Group Orders work much like an Expensed Meal Credit. Set a budget that your team can use at DoorDash. But instead of everyone ordering food separately, they place one order with a shared cart. That way, you only have to pay one set of fees, allowing your team to stretch their budgets a bit further. But, more importantly, everyone's meal comes together in one delivery, so your team can enjoy their lunch together.
Remember, when your team eats together, it benefits them and your company. They feel a sense of camaraderie that they otherwise missed by skipping lunch or eating at their desk. And your company sees improved teamwork and greater productivity by encouraging these types of social interactions.
3. Cater lunch for the whole team
When Expensed Meal Credits and Group Meals can't accommodate your large lunchtime event, you can turn to our catering option. Catering, unlike the options above, doesn't center on giving your team a budget to use on individual meals. Instead, you order all the food in advance. That way, when your lunch meeting or celebration takes place, all there's left to do is to enjoy the meal. This is easy on your team and less stressful for you.
An easy work lunch is always something you make at home. With DoorDash for Business, you can let your team order food and enjoy the easiest lunch they've had in years.
Contact us to learn more about our meal plans.
