9 ways of saving food at our workplace

The objective of this article is to show how well-researched food mapping can lead organizations to connect effectively with their respective workforce and help reduce food wastage! And who knows, effective and customized food delivery could even help in increasing the most sought-after productivity, a pressing concern in most organizations! I must quickly add that this article is applicable more in the APAC region than in other parts of the world.

1.     Keep observing!

Have you noticed how people eat at their workplace! Your key to saving food can veritably come from an in-depth observation, without being judgemental, on how people eat, with their inclination to either juicy, or spicy, or fast food! While there are people who cannot eat beyond a quantity at a time, there are also these eaters who eat only once or twice. Those who eat many times say after every one or two hours are the ones who could be wasting food. What if organizations had an innovative way of dealing with this challenge! For instance, suggesting biscuits and other knickknacks in between major meals, and allowing them to have the quantity they’d not waste during their major meals? To do anything, meaningful food data is essential for organizations trying to reduce food wastage. Can information on food habits collected from the point of entry, with an effective questionnaire from the HR, help in controlling and mapping food data?

2.     Understanding the culture

i.                 Accessories

There are people who are not so comfortable with accessories, they do not know how to hold a fork and a knife and are seen embarrassed playing catch-catch with food! I understand that they need to be trained into 'dining etiquette', but while the training is on, can they also be given the comfort of eating with hands!

ii.               Type of food

When I asked a simple question on whether people enjoy home food or outside food, very few said outside food! In this context, may I suggest considering the possibilities of bringing home-food to the office! It is for those, especially the ones who stay alone or are nuclear with both the spouses working, who cannot cook their lunches on a regular basis. For a Keralite, kanhi could be so satisfying, as for a north-Indian a simple dal chawal. I know some courses could be very difficult to be given their due place in the office menu, but for the ones possible, why not let people eat the way they like, even if it looked clumsy; after all, every day you are not eating with clients.

iii.            Can food help in increasing productivity?

I met a friend from the Ivory Coast, with whom I worked only for 25 days. I was troubled to see him not eating at all. I asked him what the problem was, and here’s what he had to say; I don’t eat because I am health conscious, so I eat less. However, the truth was revealed when, on a Saturday, I went with him to Phoenix Market city in Guindy! We ordered chicken roast and a whole lot of food you can imagine. I found him eating to his heart’s content, shamelessly from my plate too, and the smile and enthusiasm I saw on his face were priceless. But that is not the point here, what he said after he ate is! He said, Supratik, you know, I can work for 19 hours non-stop after this meal! Seeing him replete and content, my greedy mind thought of food as an in-road to productivity! Two important things here; one is he had no reason to talk about work then, but he did, why, and two, he was not talking about himself at that very moment; he was representing or voicing a large section of the working population!

3.     The mom/lady factor

About seven days later, my friend from the Ivory Coast surprised me even more! He said, Supratik, you know why I liked the food so much the other day? It’s because the food reminded me of my mom, it was so close!

A fool that I was, all this while I thought he enjoyed outside food! It’s amazing to know how food could make a person from West Africa feel at home in a food joint in Chennai! In fact, this is true for most of us; think of the food you like the most, and in your brain, you are bound to have the physical imprint of your mom and the food; just do this exercise right now, close your eyes and think of the food you like the most! If you did that sincerely, you could even feel the saliva leaking from your tongue. So powerful is the ‘connect’ that everybody, without exception, either thinks of their mother, or their spouse, or a special lady with that special dish. I am sorry to be sounding sexist; ladies have a very special place for generations in everyone’s heart because of this quality, some guys are trying to catch up, but guys you have a way to go! The point I am trying to make here is to try and see if we could bring moms or those special ladies into the office kitchen, the quality of the cooking may not be the same, but it could certainly be close, isn’t it?

4.     Bringing home-food in offices

Having said that organizations can really come up with innovative ideas of bringing home-food to the office; there are people from the north-east who prefer boiled rice with dollops of butter and one simple boiled egg; people from the south who prefer plantain, tamarind rice, and those from the north prefer sagwala meat, paneer just the way they’d have at home, and there are these people who connect more with outside food. Some Indians, at times, prefer poha on plane cold water with lime and sugar, some prefer simple puffed rice with mustard oil and green chilies. I understand that it may not be possible to accommodate the rich variety of Indian food in offices, but much can be done despite limitations and constraints; they are more of alterable than constraints strictly speaking!

Therefore, understanding the culture is as sacrosanct as understanding the laws of the land.

5.     Emulating inclusiveness at the dining table

There was this organization where we used to play a very interesting game as part of Induction; it was called the dish game I vaguely remember. An effective ice-breaker, the game would start from one person who would first say his/her name and then the dish s/he preferred. This is a rich source of information in finding the road-map to saving food because here’s where the workforce is speaking their heart out! However, the point I am making here is not this, but a much larger issue that can emulate inclusiveness in the proper sense of the term. There was this guy who said his preferred dish was mutton during the game, but came up to me at the end of the session and told me that his preferred dish wasn’t mutton, but it was beef; he also told me how scared he was telling in public about his preferred dish his mom makes best in the world. Later, I remember going to the restroom and silently praying that I want to live in a country where people can talk fearlessly about what they like to eat, without feeling guilty. However, expecting this from a country like India is not easy; but can we expect this from organizations that have inclusiveness as their 'raison d’être'? When would the time come in organizations when their workforce could be seen eating different types of food at the same table, instead of Brahmanas teaming up and eating together talking openly on how they hate non-vegetarian food, perhaps even the eaters too, right in the middle of organizations desperately trying to promote inclusiveness?

6.     The thought that wasting food is a crime may not help

Interestingly, in many cultures across the world, wasting food is seen as a mark of opulence, that if you wasted food and threw them away, cats, dogs, and crows will eat and survive; in turn, they will bless you to become richer. Typically, people belonging to this faith unconsciously put the food in the litter as a metaphor to those animals; something they have learned for generations. Even if you looked at Europe, tomatoes can also be seen as wasted in the famous festival La Tomatina, and there is also much of wastage in the Oktoberfest! To cope with these disobedient challenges, the tact would be to create an atmosphere where the workforce collectively learns how not to waste, and in case of waste, how to channel that wasted food appropriately! Criminalizing wasting food may not help in the long run. All in all, we need to be patient, not restless, determined, and not desperate.

7.     An effective mantra (slogan) could help

Get an effective mantra for your workforce, or for the team which is committed to saving food. I could think of one; “Our employees are all well-meaning and they do not waste food”; feed this into your thought even if you see them wasting food right in front of your eyes! The more you think your employees are indifferent, the more it will come true. Likewise, if you churn an energizing mantra, it could also work. I am not a competent person to tell you how it works, but it works flawlessly in every situation, of course in time!

8.     Taking the credit

A vice, a virus that is rampant everywhere, in all walks of life, in the littlest thing we do, not do! One can easily understand how it jeopardizes all meaningful efforts with one or two examples.

Imagine a huddle happening in your organization about saving food. Your senior manager has proposed something; everybody will say, hey this is the best, we will do it! When the results would fail you, you'd say saving food is not possible and give it up! But if you probe, do an RCA, you could find, as it were, that your desperate attempt in trying to grab the credit with a 'win-lose' approach actually stood on the way. Your results would either show that saving food is not possible or it could even be worse, your papers will show you have succeeded, but the litters won't.

9.     With patience and teamwork, ways are bound to show up

Food is the first love, 'papi pet ka sawal' are sayings which are as old as time! Count on them, work on them, and you will find your ways, if not in six months, but with multiple, meaningful and probing trials with patience and teamwork in several sets of semesters, you will definitely find the way to put the first love in stomachs that are willing, wanting and waiting to eat.

Bon appétit!

Image credit: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110703/ttlife.htm