Watch out Google, a Maine business is stepping up its cafeteria game

WESTBROOK, Maine — In the mornings, on the way to her desk, Ivy Finglas stops by the smoothie station at Idexx and asks the server to whip up a special breakfast drink made with mango, pineapple, whey protein, flaxseed and orange juice.

At noon, Finglas might order her favorite Idexx lunch – a salad of grilled lettuce and chicken – or visit the sushi bar, where chef Moe Thet stays busy twice a week satisfying appetites for raw tuna and salmon.

“This place is awesome,” Finglas, who has worked at Idexx in Westbrook for two years, said of the company’s newest cafeteria – er, “dining venue” – known as Fusion. “Sushi Tuesday and Wednesday. Great salad bar. Brick-oven pizza. What’s not to like? Most places I’ve ever worked, the food is terrible.”

At 18 months old, Fusion is still a work in progress. But in a world where most big corporations outsource food for their employees, what Idexx has done offers a look at what’s possible. Providing employees with these edible amenities helps keep the company competitive with peers in larger cities by improving staff recruitment and retention, especially among younger employees with a higher “culinary IQ.”

Over the long term, offering smarter food choices may also reduce the cost of health care for the company, which makes diagnostic testing equipment for animals, dairy products and water quality. (In Idexx’s case, the company’s Wellness Committee had a big voice in developing Fusion and its more healthful menu.)

Instead of hiring a contractor, Idexx has built its own dining staff, including an executive chef, baker, pastry chef, sushi chef and other cooks who work various stations around the room. At the chopped salad station, in addition to the usual tomato and carrots, employees can get cubed butternut squash roasted with thyme and sage, and a special house blend of greens that includes red oak and greenleaf lettuces, frisee, radicchio and arugula. Bored with chicken and tofu? Top a salad with salmon or falafel.

“I’d love to tell you the whole salad bar is grown locally, but it’s not,” dining services manager Kim Cassella said on a recent tour. “We do the best we can with the seasons that are given to us in Maine. Whenever we can, we like to support local. We had a great program in October where we worked with local fish.”

Cassella consulted with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute for ideas, so that each Thursday instead of bringing a tuna sandwich from home, Idexx employees could try monkfish, redfish or some other plentiful but under-used species from the Gulf of Maine. Chefs handed out recipe cards with each plate they prepared.

Fusion’s pizza oven – Cassella says it’s the state’s largest – makes a variety of pies daily; on a recent day, the choices were Hawaiian, with ham and pineapple; cheese; and garden vegetable.

Another station offers international food, including an occasional noodle bar.

All this investment is paying off in happier employees who are eating more fruits and vegetables, according to Idexx’s internal surveys, and using their time more efficiently. The company has a “corporate feeding” participation rate of 86 percent – meaning that 86 percent of their 2,000 employees eat at Fusion or another Idexx dining venue rather than brown bag it or eat off campus. The usual rate, Cassella says, is 50 to 60 percent, a figure in line with those provided by the Society for Hospitality and Food Service Management.

COLLEGE EDUCATION

When it comes to feeding employees, businesses are taking lessons from higher education.

“In the food service industry, it’s commonly colleges that set the pace,” Cassella said. “Then those kids graduate and come to work in the corporate world, so we’re always a bit behind. The colleges figured out that if the food is good, they get the cream of the crop of students.”

Those students want more choices, and they often eat at odd hours, preferences that Cassella took into consideration when developing Fusion. The emphasis on food at Idexx, she said, is part of a larger strategy “that we be a desirable employer, that we continue to attract the cream of the crop, and that they stick around.”