The other day I visited an ex-colleague at the company at which she works and she bought me lunch at the company cafeteria. My ex-colleague now works at a brilliant office building and the cafeteria, on the 15th floor, is fantastic like a luxury hotel lounge with large windows from which you can see fancy downtown buildings. It surprised me. The cafeteria offered a wide variety of healthy entrees and they were all visually beautiful. That’s what today’s company cafeteria is all about.
I chose one of their healthy set menus – grilled cod special. The main entree looked like fried fish, but it wasn’t actually fried. The fish was grilled with herbs and spices, then lightly seasoned. I was satisfied with and enjoyed the dish, which was garnished with plenty of veggies. The plate looked substantial but since I took a smaller amount of rice, I probably consumed less than 500 kilocalories in total.
As many of you may have noticed, company cafeterias in Japan have dramatically changed in recent years. The interior designs and atmosphere have become sophisticated, but the biggest change has been the food itself. Originally, the main purpose of a company cafeteria was to eliminate the inconvenience of going out for lunch and to provide employees with the place to rest.
Recently, however, as lifestyle-related disease prevention has been taken more seriously, a body fat & weight scale manufacturer’s best practice drew nationwide attention. The meals provided at the company cafeteria have helped the employees with successfully controlling their weight. Registered dietitians at the company were largely responsible for the success: they planned, cooked and provided low-calorie and tasty meals containing a lot of veggies for the cafeteria. Some of those menus were published as a series of books containing recipes from the company’s cafeteria, and the series has sold over 5 million copies so far. This success story was eventually made into a movie. Not only has the health appliance manufacturer gained a higher reputation, but the company also expanded into the food-service business.
Following the company’s success, other companies began to upgrade their company cafeteria. In the previous century, they valued quantity rather than quality in company and school cafeterias; well-balanced nutrition and tastiness were secondary. At the company I visited, I heard that in addition to improving the content of the meals, they have recently redesigned the interior of the cafeteria so that they could use it for office parties and for entertaining their clients. The company now regards its cafeteria as a place for creating values.
In 21st century Japan, society has evolved to where we tend to choose quality over quantity and seek new values. I think I saw an example of such a change in values in this today’s company cafeteria.
Reported by Yukari Aoike, Sugahara Institute