As employers call workers into the office in a post-pandemic world of work, many are looking for ways to entice them back, build community and drive innovation. All of these aims can be furthered by providing food at work, according to ezCater, a leading tech platform for U.S. workplaces.

The organization connects employer clients—which include Fortune 500 companies like T-Mobile, FedEx and P&G—with more than 100,000 restaurants nationwide through flexible, scalable solutions. It’s an employee benefit that may be rising on the agenda of HR and benefits leaders as organizations lean into returning to offices. According to the company’s research, 88% of business leaders say corporate meal programs encourage greater in-office attendance. ezCater client SeatGeek, for instance, found that attendance increased fivefold after the company started providing food at work for employees.

Meanwhile, employees say they can save half an hour each day when their employer provides them with a meal. More than three-quarters of food orderers also told ezCater that food-at-work programs drive up retention.

‘No jerks’ and other company values

Behind the growing, nearly 20-year-old company are about 850 employees across 40 states, says Robert Kaskel, vice president of people.

Kaskel, who joined ezCater in January, says ezCater’s values-driven company culture has been critical to its ongoing growth. Called the ingredients of its “culture recipe,” the organization’s 10 stated values include “no jerks,” “trust in transparency” and “grow fast and eat cupcakes.” These ingredients are “embedded in the fabric of our company,” Kaskel says. They power everything from candidate assessment to performance evaluation and the integration of AI into innovation plans.

ezCater’s culture also comes to life, Kaskel says, through a number of new employee benefits. These include fertility and mental health support—and its embrace of a flexibility strategy that focuses on empowering employees. Employees can work from wherever they choose, but are invited to ezCater’s Boston office for a voluntary, once-monthly ezTogether week.

Kaskel—whose career includes HR roles at Mattel, Microsoft and Amazon, and chief people officer positions at Remitly and Checkr, Inc.—recently spoke with HR Executive about the growing role of food at work and how benefits innovation can deepen company culture.

HR Executive: What role are you seeing employer-provided food at work playing in the conversation about remote and in-person work?

Kaskel: Our target customers are enterprises that wish to provide food, either fully paid for or subsidized, to their employees. These are companies that see the value of providing food in the workplace, who know the qualitative and quantitative benefits.

They know that it drives deeper levels of productivity, higher levels of retention, a deeper willingness to come into the office—where good things happen, like collaboration and innovation.

ezCater allows folks in these companies to serve their own dietary preferences. It’s not like the old days where you come into the office and it’s taco day or pasta day. Employees can order through our Relish program the food they desire on that day. You don’t have to plan far in advance. You can show up in the morning, order what you feel like having for lunch that day, and your colleagues sitting next to you may have ordered from a different restaurant. That flexibility is something that our customers care about.

HR Executive: How can HR leaders bridge the gaps in return-to-office discussions?

Kaskel: I’ll give you a response that I’m sure you’ve heard from others. We want to expand our talent pool. We want to be able to hire from essentially any place in the United States. If we limit ourselves to hiring just folks in the Boston area—yes, there are many smart people in the Boston area, but we want to leverage smart people who sit around the country. We’re able to leverage the broader talent pool to our benefit.

What we find in the preferences of our employees and candidates is that they do desire deeply that flexibility to work from home for the whole time, to come into the office on occasion. And we provide that flexibility: Whatever working model works best for you, we’re cool with it.

HR Executive: Beyond flexibility, what prompted some of ezCater’s recent benefit additions?

Kaskel: Our workforce, on average, is pretty young. Many of our employees are at the stage in life where they’re considering starting a family, having children. Through a needs analysis and understanding what our employees care about, we brought in Carrot. [The] fertility provider supports women and families through the full lifecycle of their fertility journey.

We’ve also brought in Modern Health, which provides mental health services to employees. But they also do a lot more; I have a coach through Modern Health that helps me with my exercise regimen. You can get involved in a group for pretty much anything you could think about: weight loss or parenting support. You can have a one-on-one interaction, be part of a group, leverage online learning.

Modern Health has told us that from a utilization perspective, we are among the top of their customers. Our employees have really gravitated toward that.

We are a company that cares deeply about inclusion. [For instance], we provide gender-affirming care to folks who desire that level of service through our medical provider, Cigna. [ezCater’s] unique benefits meet our employees where they are.

HR Executive: Where do you see your mental health strategy headed in the coming years?

Kaskel: I think a lot of it depends on what our employees expect of us. We were thoughtful about tracking utilization rates and investing our finite resources in the benefits spaces that our employees care about the most. Mental health support has emerged as one of those areas. We expect to continue to engage in an active way with Modern Health and invest in therapeutic services through the medical plan. And through our data collection process internally, we have the opportunity to flex up or down based on what the needs of employees look like.

HR Executive: How are you selecting the vendors to partner with on these benefits additions?

Kaskel: We want to partner with vendors who care about us as a customer. That may seem like an obvious answer, but it’s not an obvious outcome. We partnered with medical providers in the past who were unwilling to provide the level of customized service that we desire. Now at Cigna, we have an ezCater-only customer service line. Employees can call in, and the person who picks up the phone knows our business, knows the needs of our employees. We’re not just another customer for this huge medical provider that serves tens of millions of people. We feel we’re seen and heard and treated in a unique way. That’s largely what we’re looking for.

HR Executive: Outside of ezCater, you’re involved with Challenger baseball. How did that come about?

Kaskel: It’s my passion. My wife is a public school special ed teacher. About 10 years ago, she had a student who played Challenger baseball. I had never heard of it. I’m passionate about baseball; I have five kids, and I coached them all growing up through Little League. We watched this kid play Challenger baseball, which is adaptive baseball for kids with disabilities, and just thought it was amazing.

I went back to my local Little League—I was on the board already, so I have all the relationships—and I said, “We want to start this up here.” So, about seven years ago, we did. I live in Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft is headquartered, and we now have the largest program in the state. We have about 60 or 70 kids register for the spring season or fall season. It’s entirely free to these families, and it requires a tremendous volunteer population to run this. We have over 75 regular volunteers who show up every Saturday to facilitate this experience.

Baseball is just the vehicle, but it’s really not about baseball. It’s about giving the kids an opportunity to interact with their peers, make friends, build confidence and allow parents to sit in the stands and cheer their kids on. We hear from these parents that this is the only time they have the opportunity to do that.