day 202: Subsidized Food

One of the things that companies will do as they grow is decide to bring in house food service and start to provide on-site cafeterias so that employees can eat throughout the day and not have to leave the work place. This is good for employees and also for the company as it relates to productivity and efficiency. I learned over the years though that if you are trying to turn your company cafeteria into a profit center that it is impossible to do so. In order to be able to provide the quality of food that will keep employees wanting to eat on location versus go out to eat means that there must be enough choices and variety to make it attractive. Once you start adding all of that, then it becomes unaffordable as an offering to the employees so the company must then subsidize, or underwrite, the cost of the food and service. And from there, you then make the ongoing decision of how much subsidy against how much you want to offer to the employees, etc. In some ways this becomes one of those areas where once you start, you can't stop and no matter what you continue to do, it might not be enough and no one ends up happy. Many a company has come out of the shoot with free food for everyone, all the time, only to pull back on that promise when times get tight. Each pull back breaks a little more of the relationship contract with the workforce and a new story is created about the times "when we used to get free food". It can be a bad cycle. Anyone who has led a business understands that what you do with the perks and promises is an important set of management decisions and also a slippery slope. Many of these fall into the camp of "better never to start than to start and then stop". And believe me, food, snacks, candy, soda can be the lightning rods for these emotions. I was working at a division of PepsiCo when the company decided no more free Pepsi...everyone would now pay a quarter a can. You can guess the reaction. All of this reminds me that we, as people, whether rightly or wrongly, are always looking for the free lunch but at the same time we more so don't want to be given something and then have it taken away. Fortunately, we are all given the greatest food subsidy imagineable by God. We are given the greatest food and drink, at a cost that will never borne by us, and never taken away. We see this in John 6:35: "Jesus replied, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Today, all of us and our co-workers are hungering and thirsting for something that we cannot describe but we know it when we hear others and ourselves wanting for more in our lives, our jobs, and our relationships. No one on this earth can subsidize that "food" to our total expectations. Each one of us, if we expect that to happen will be disappointed. We need to look to only God for that subsidy. He underwrote all of this for us long ago. As you work today think about what God has provided for each of us and how satisfying all of His offerings can be if we only choose to accept them from Him. The cafeteria at the office may fall short of our expectations but God's food will more than satisfy!

Reference John 6:35 (New Living Testament)