B&I Power Players: Onsite dining in the country’s 25 largest office buildings

With the changes in workplace culture brought on by the COVID pandemic, corporate dining is undergoing a major adjustment period in which the kind of lunchtime crowds typical of yesteryear can no longer be counted on to appear. While some industries may be more successful than others in luring employees back to their offices on a full-time basis, the consensus seems to be that most white-collar workplaces will see fewer bodies onsite on any given day than before. Meanwhile, there is also a growing consensus that if employers are to succeed in getting staff back from their home offices, workplace amenities like attractive dining options are an important component of the effort.

That being the case, we thought we’d take a look at what in-house dining amenities are available in the largest office buildings in the country. For the sake of convenience, we drew our roster of 25 buildings from this Wikipedia list, so any inaccuracies in statistics are theirs, while the info on dining amenities at each are either from the building operators themselves or from independent FM research.

It’s important to note that these are single buildings, not multi-structure complexes, so major corporate centers like the Microsoft campus near Seattle are not included. For the most part, the buildings are multi-tenant and located in downtowns or other densely populated urban settings, which means that in-house dining has to compete with what’s available nearby. 

That factor—undoubtedly exacerbated recently by remote-work-related building population reductions—probably explains why most of the buildings on this list seem to have opted for a combination of commercial restaurant outlets on the premises that also draw outside traffic to boost revenues, and minimal tenant-exclusive foodservice areas like grab and go kiosks and coffee shops incorporated into other amenities like fitness centers, recreation rooms and employee lounges. Many also offer meeting/conference facilities with catering services.

Here's what’s at the 25 largest office buildings located in the U.S in terms of onsite dining…