And for employees at the headquarters or at satellite sites in suburban Boston or the Research Triangle, the company's "Health Connections" program combines nutritious meal options with access to fitness centers and health coaches tasked with keeping workers in top shape. (All Cisco employees can participate in the program, but in the U.S. only the San Jose, Boxborough, Mass., and North Carolina offices have both cafeterias and gyms on site.) The effort received a top award from the National Business Group on Health earlier this year.

Cisco's program is part of a trend in business and industry food service. Driven by ever-rising health insurance costs, companies see a connection between the bottom line and their workers' waistlines. Minneapolis-based food manufacturer General Mills, which contracts with Sodexho to run its employee food service, has made a point of emphasizing healthy eating by heavily subsidizing the salad bar in its cafeteria. The company even took some of the junk food out of its vending machines, says Tim Crimmins, General Mills' vice-president of health, safety, and wellness. "We took the chocolate away," Crimmins says. "We wanted to just get their attention — and we did."

Part of the business
As much as bringing lunch to workers may boost productivity and improve health, it can also be an opportunity for a company to promote its brands. At General Mills, that meant a "Heart Health Month" that featured free servings of the company's Cheerios and Wheaties breakfast cereals. Or it can be a place where a company can demonstrate its style and values to potential clients. That's a big deal to the Los Angeles office of TBWA Chiat Day, an advertising firm that also contracts with Bon Appetit. "Everything we do reflects on us," says Carol Madonna, the firm's director of operations. "Image is so important, and when we can wow the client with food, that's a big deal." The firm's chef even whipped up a batch of breakfast dishes that incorporated rice on the morning of a new-business pitch session with Uncle Ben's. One menu item: multigrain quiche.

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Not all seek outside help running their cafeterias. Take Hallmark Cards, for example. The Kansas City, Mo. company has been providing meals for its employees since 1923, says Sally Luck, director of corporate services. Between the Crown Room, a traditional cafeteria that Luck describes as "a place to be seen in the company," to a smaller, trendier, and less formal café full of takeaway options, there's seating for almost 600 diners. And those seats are in demand: Luck boasts of an 80 percent participation rate for Hallmark's employee cafeteria, meaning that four meals are dished up each day for every five workers in the building. "That's one of the indications for us that self-operating is still a good idea," she says. Healthy options are a hit, and a half-dozen Hallmark chefs are culinary school graduates with restaurant experience.

Holistic health
Companies that offer meals as a benefit are acknowledging that there's more to their employees' lives than what happens during the workday, says Maisie Greenawalt, Bon Appetit's director of communications and strategic initiatives. "They are looking at their employees in a more holistic way and realizing that the success of the employee at work is related to a number of factors, [including] work/life balance, health, and connection to community," Greenawalt says.

And the focus on healthy choices is increasing, according to Ira Cohn, president of Aramark's business and industry group. Aramark operates about 1,400 cafés for 500 corporate clients, including "a large percentage of the Fortune 500," and employee health is at the forefront of many of those managers' minds. "They'd like us to be part of the process of helping their employees eat healthy and just be educated about better health," Cohn says.

Still, quality is king. That's especially true in New York City, where Hearst opened a café in its new state-of-the-art office tower last year. Not only are food options plentiful in the surrounding neighborhood, but there's a Whole Foods Market a few blocks away. So Hearst brought in Restaurant Associates, another Compass Group company, to run a cafeteria that would feature, among other things, an organic salad bar and a pair of sushi chefs. Says operations director Lou Nowikas, "We're a creative company, and we wanted our food service to be creative."

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