I work in an office with 2000 people but it is on a campus so the only options for lunch are sandwiches/packed lunch or the staff canteen.

As with all these types of services the catering is outsourced to a service company. Without fail, every time I visit the canteen I’m disappointed so I rarely use it. However today I noticed in their “live action” section, where they supposedly cook the food fresh in front of you, they were serving Tom Yum Noodle soup.

“Great” I though “I love Thai food and noodle soup is perfectly suited to that sort of canteen food so maybe it will be ok; I’ll have that”

How wrong I was. It was vile and was clearly a dish “designed” by someone with a calculator and a supplier’s catalogue rather than a chef who had ever tasted Tom Yum soup. To make things worse they had the gall to charge £4.03 for what was just some broth, some noodles (although not many) and a bit of chopped veg.

For others who work in a large office is their experience similar or do we have a particularly crappy canteen?

Ours is distinctly uninspiring cuisine/variety wise, but on the plus side you often get a bit of yesterday’s menu dried on your cutlery…mmmmm!

I had the pleasure of visiting a few of thales’ big sites in france…. their canteens were a sight to behold!

Huge counters with lots of different choices of food, all fresh and all nice; e.g. a pizza stand (with pizza oven), grill section, pasta bar, fish counter..

best bit was the drinks section, nice selection of full and half bottles of wine.

Everyone seemed to get together on the big long tables and have friendly communal lunches.

It was a world apart from the british slop and sandwiches approach which seems to be ubiquitous.

Dave

You have a crap canteen. Who is your caterer?

I’ve worked for three large companies with canteens in the past and they have each been excellent. Really! Also, there are some folk at HPA on here who have spoken positively about theirs in the past.

Edited to say that the Thales approach described above is very like each of the UK canteens I’ve used, so it just varies by company.

Breakfast takes our canteen by surprise every morning without fail.

Ours is alright to be honest.

The Thales experience is like mine at the Staples HO in the US. Proper restaurant only with a better selection of food and cheap to.

I’m sure ours is a “chicken and egg” cost thing. Its too expensive and shit so people don’t go. And because people don’t go they don’t want to spend money on making it better. But if it was better and cheaper people would go and then it would be cheaper to run.

I once freelanced for a large American bank. Their ‘canteen’ was staggeringly good. Restaurant was a better description

Separate kitchens cooked Fresh Pizza and Pasta, chinese/thai stir fry’s, noodles etc, then the more traditional lunchtime fare – freshly made sandwiches and baked spuds etc Everything was cooked with lovely fresh ingredients. It was bloody gorgeous

It was all subsidised. In the morning you could go and get a full English for about a quid. I may have put on a bit of weight while there 😳

Although what you’re describing in terms of location, sounds like Barclays in Knutsford, I loved working there for the quality of the grub on offer – it was excellent. Really, really good.

Unlike a large bank I worked for in Halifax where the staff not only had problems constructing a sandwich but even remember what I’d asked for 2 seconds previously was too much for them.

I was at Cisco Bedfont Lakes a few weeks back, fantastic. If I worked there, I’d be a fat knacker!

DaveyBoyWonder – it was MBNA in Chester. Though I doubt many banks skimp when it comes to spoiling themselves (Yorkshire possibly being the exception). Once you’d got your lunch, you could then recline and eat it in a big leather sofa, in a lovely glass atrium. Hellish! 😉

I saw the Brakes van parked outside the campus canteen, and decided it was packed lunch from now on.

Chris King has the right idea.

http://www.oregonlive.com/mix/index.ssf/food-trends/chris-king-bike-components-maker-and-food-guru.html

http://chrisking.com/company/commuter_challenge

One day I will work for a company who actually give a sh1t about their employees.

Is it a legal requirement to provide a staff canteen for sites employing over a certain number of people?

I’m sure a lot of businesses only have a staff canteen because they’re obliged to, judging by the quality of what’s served up.

Having said that, these days I think an increasing number of people are realising how much cheaper it can be to bring your own lunch from home – eating in our canteen every day would cost me around £25/wk. I can make my own lunch every day for at least half this.

We have a kettle and a microwave. Oh, and a toaster.

Ours is good, though people still complain.

Caramelised duck leg with broad beans and potato purée was €3.50 today.

We also have a bar/terrace overlooking the tennis courts. 🙂

Having said that, these days I think an increasing number of people are realising how much cheaper it can be to bring your own lunch from home – eating in our canteen every day would cost be around £25. I can make my own lunch every day for at least half this.

This is the thing that pisses me off. It “should” be possible to be able to mass cater for 2,000 people, even with good choice and decent food, for a price that is cheaper than high street “meal deals” and comparable to the cost of making a packed lunch.

I saw the Brakes van parked oputside the campus canteen, and decided it was packed lunch from now on.

This

we have a canteen which serves an office of about 1,500 people and I think the food is really good:
– soup ‘bar’ with two choices of soup
– ‘exotic’ food – usually a choice of two curries or other asian food
– ‘grill’ with grilled chicken or pork, fries with cajun, mexican, spicy sauces and wraps
– ‘standard fare’ stews, meat, fish, pies with vegetables and potatoes
– ‘baked potatoes’ with chilli or beans
= ‘salad bar’ with salads, pasta, couscous, vegetables, cold meats, cheese

all done is very corporate way, but the choice is pleasant and the food good. it’s not too expensive either – £3-4 for a meal.

I make my own sandwiches.

Also why does a sausage sandwich cost £2 in the ofice canteen but 80p in the warehouse canteen when they both have the same “service provider”. AFAIK neither is subsidised.

gall to charge £4.03

They must have a lot of shrapnel to handle all those people hander over a fiver!

Priced on ‘ability to pay’ – office staff are probably paid more, so can afford more expensive lunches

I miss when my office was in town and this place

or

was the regular, preferred lunch of choice. a quick stroll round the corner for 3 (outstandingly good) curries and rice for a fiver. Ahhhhhhh happy days indeed. Or perhaps Chicken Tikka kebabs, with yoghurt and salad in fresh naan for £3.50

Christ! I could just eat that now!!!!

Binners, I used to go to This & That all the time when working in Manchester. Fantastic place.

i visit our sites all over the world

norway and houston canteens by far exceed ours (which to be fair isnt bad)

But as above it costs alot to eat in (where as both norway and houston were free/built into the salary) so bringing food from home wins !

Ours used to be very good, there even used to be waitress service. Now it’s kack. 3663 ‘food’ delivery trucks outside twice a week, the sausages left over from breakfast are often served at lunch, and what’s left over from lunch is often served at dinner time. It’s rarely served hot, and even rarer is it tasty.

I went in on Tuesday evening for dinner and saw the chef (lol) rumaging in a pot then put something in his mouth, I turned around and walked out.

The best one I’ve ever bee to was at IAF Cameri in northern Italy, we’d walk to the canteen at around 11:30am, have a two or three course lunch, stroll back to a bar and have a coffee, Limencello on a Friday.

I used to work for the Bradford and Bingley Building Society (that says how long ago) The subsidised canteen was fantastic. People used to eat their rather than eating at home

Worked on quite a few sites, and funnily enough, they were all different quality but all operated by the same catering group.

Filton one seemed to be burger+chips, pie+chips, sausage+chips, pizza+chips (every Thurs?), and fish+chips (Friday, of course). If you didn’t want something+chips, you could have something+chips+beans instead.

Dutch site used to have a fat ginger girl with attention deficit disorder. Never be 3rd in the queue to be served, because after serving 2 people she’d have to do something else.

German site – I tend to just grab a sarnie, these days, but I think the food is OK. Certainly 1000x more variety than at Airbus.

Italian site, is pretty decent. Cheap too. Meat dish, pasta dish, dessert, and a drink is a wallet emptying €2.25

Alenia Aerospazio in Rome had a strange one. Select some colour tokens depending on how you wanted your meal to differ from the default meal. Send your tray+tokens down a conveyor, and collect it at the end. What you actually get is usually a surprise! 1 dish missing was normal. Sometimes you’d get an empty tray with tokens, so would have to start over 😉

Canteen??

How Northern.

Ours is a restaurant, propers like it is. We have 4 “sites” across this ‘ere land of ours and each restaurant is a delight to eat/chomp/munch/nom nom nom in.

You’d be hard pushed to call it/them anything else.

Quite exceptional.

“is both thankful and greatful of the service”

We have a woman that comes in and serves food at lucnhtime in one of our kitchens, but it’s hardly a canteen.

The one at BT Labs used to be ace (back in the late 90’s) and the 3Com one in Hemel was pretty good too until the fuel depot took care of the building.

My best canteen has to be the D-Fac at Bastion 1. It is awesome.

I was at Alenia in Rome for a couple of months in 2009, I gave up and went hungry more than once.

We have Sodexo, not good.

+1 for This and That and all the other little cheep curry places in the Northern Quarter.

We have Sodexo, not good.

Aramark… bleuuuurrrrgh

Ours would be much better if the staff understood the concept of “limited shelf life”, as mould is often off-putting when discovered on your food.

Still, it’s cheap and the girl on the till is pretty fit and has a penchant for low-cut tops, suppose that makes up for it.

got food poisoning from a half cooked bacon sandwich (that’s one half cooked the other half raw) when I worked at codemasters. The dirty looks and bad service I got afterwards because I had the “cheek” to blame them for it.

Ours is poor, outsourced to Compass who use Brakes industrial slop.

Not cheap at all and if we want hot water for a cuppa then we’re charged 20p for that.

Depending on which terminal I’m working in I’ve got a choice of 8 staff canteens to use.

Some of them are decidedly crap, some are distinctly average and some are fantastic depending on which time of the day you go. Certain ones do good breakfast, a couple do good lunch/dinner and the one I’ll be using today does fantastic roast dinners on Sunday and great curries on Thursdays.
Needless to say, I’ll be heading there for curry night tonight!

First place I worked had a great canteen. You could get a roast on Wednesday with pudding for about £2.20. And Friday was fish & chips.
Lots of people, mainly the single ones would have their main meal at work & a snack in the evening.

The canteen at Airbus in Hamburg was pretty good, although a bit samey & a customer I used to visit in Italy had a great canteen…

So I’ve either worked in places with decent canteens or none at all…

My office canteen

I eat lunch at my desk.

The Jenbacher canteen is that good the locals from Jenbach go their for lunch, its bettter than most of the restaurants in Innsbruck, the british way is normally like it or lump it.