Dave & Company Keep Outdoing Themselves
Over the past handful of days the Broadway Deli in Town Square has featured an impressive run of lunch cuisine, including grilled hamburgers (like, actually grilled, by Dave) on May 6, teriyaki chicken sandwiches on May 12, and a double-whammy of baked potato bar (all the toppings you could want, and all for under $2.50!) and BBQ beef ribs today. I hear steak sandwiches are coming soon, and I haven't even mentioned the seemingly bottomless supply of fresh strawberries that have graced the salad bar all spring. Incredible! I planned to take pictures of the ribs today, but they were cleaned out before I made my way downstairs with the camera.
I've been reading about the theoretical impacts of both positive and negative morale on productivity lately, and I'm going to go ahead and say that having the Broadway Deli (which is, essentially, the ETC version of your basic corporate cafeteria) makes for lots of good positive morale. Like the rest of Town Square, it features an appropriately-styled "storefront", which only adds to its natural, downtown street cafe feel. I love how you can't get through the salad line without having at least two casual conversations with people you probably never otherwise see in your daily work, and if you go at peak time, you needn't be surprised to hear Kelly, Mary or Missy talking friendly smack to a customer (usually Bill) getting picky or indecisive with his lunch order. I especially love how Dave keeps trying to find new ways to keep the masses happy, like trying a new supplier of chocolate chip cookies because he thought they used better quality chocolate in the chips. Now, that's a guy who cares about his job - and probably knows it's about much more than just food service.
There was a brief time I lamented our office's lack of walking-distance proximity to restaurants (I think there are exactly zero), but I am now a Broadway Deli devotee, and I don't think I'm alone! Something tells me Fred hoped and wanted this to happen when this new building was conceived a few years back, and that they would agree with what Brad Bird, Academy Award-winning director at Pixar, had to say recently about morale:
"If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents
of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get
about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale."
Thankfully, mine does, right down to the food.