AT A GLANCE Name: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Outlets: 2 cafes, 1 coffee shop, 1 gift shop/c-store (Jacksonville HQ campus); 1 café, 1 gift shop (downtown Jacksonville); 1 café (Miami) Dining Contractors: Sodexo (all Jacksonville operations); Eurest (Miami operation) 2010 Revenues (Jacksonville area operations): $3 million (cafes), $700,000 (catering), $500,000 (vending) Onsite Employees: 5,300 (HQ campus only) Daily Transactions (HQ cafes): 2,800 Avg. Daily Participation (HQ cafes): 32% (lunch), 19% (breakfast)

In an era when companies are cutting back or eliminating their onsite dining operations, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida has bucked the trend. The large Jacksonville, FL, based insurance company has not only kept its headquarters cafeteria open through the recent economic slump, but over the last few years added a second one on the campus, along with a coffee shop that is designed specifically to meet the needs of time-strapped hourly workers.

At those dining venues, employees are encouraged to embrace BCBSF's wellness and healthy living philosophy with discounts on healthy items. The company also makes healthier options the default choice where no preference is indicated. Plus, employees can earn extra cash for medical expenses simply by taking steps to stay in shape (see sidebar).

BCBSF has maintained a cafeteria at its headquarters ever since the campus opened in 1997 with two buildings. That cafeteria was complemented by a second full-sized eatery in October 2008, built to accommodate an influx of some 1,500 new onsite staff as well as to leverage the investment the company was making in new kitchen facilities to support the catering operations for its new onsite conference center.

“The employees we were bringing on campus were used to eating either from vending machines or going outside for lunch,” says Damian Monticello, corporate foodservice liaison for BCBSF. “We wanted to provide a convenient and healthy in-house option that everyone could easily access because the company still looks at onsite dining as an employee benefit. Having only one cafeteria at that point would have locked out most of our nonexempt employees because it would have been difficult for them to get lunch in their lunch break time windows.”

Hourly employees are also served by a third onsite foodservice option, a small café called Perks that is located on the ground level of the building where many of the customer service staff work. These staffers are especially constrained because their time away from their stations is restricted to ensure that enough are available at all times to field calls. Long lines at the main cafeteria were forcing many to forego the onsite option, so the company decided to provide a more convenient outlet, which opened in January 2007.

Perks offers coffee and other hot beverages, as well as cold bottled beverages, sweets and grab-and-go items all day — muffins, bagels and other breakfast-type items in the morning and salads and sandwiches later in the day.

Continuing the Amenity

The headquarters complex has some 5,300 employees scattered across seven buildings (another 1,500 or so work in the downtown Jacksonville building, which also boasts a full-scale cafeteria). The company also manages some 200 vending machines scattered across the headquarters campus and various Jacksonville satellite sites. These generate about a half million dollars in annual revenues.

The cafeterias bring in around $3 million and catering adds about $750,000 more. Sodexo, which took over management in 2008 at the same time that the second cafeteria opened, manages all foodservice operations for BCBSF around Jacksonville. (There's also a full-service cafeteria in Miami that is managed by Eurest.)

The headquarters cafeterias — the original one is called Café 100 and the new one Café 900 after the buildings in which they are located — operate continuously from 7 am until 1:30 in the afternoon, though a grab-and-go/coffee section remains open into the late afternoon hours. Perks is open from 7 in the morning to 5 pm. There is also a small gift shop/c-store that sells bottled beverages, packaged snacks and shelf-stable food items like cereal bowls.

The decision to open a second full-service cafeteria was driven by the desire to make onsite dining convenient for all employees, including those with limited meal time windows, but folding the production areas into the planned conference center foodservice operation certainly made the decision easier. Otherwise, the company could simply have “opened another Perks,” says Monticello.

BCBSF had wanted an onsite conference facility in order to eliminate the costs — in time as well as money — associated with holding meetings at leased offsite facilities. Now, with its new conference facility fully functional, company policy requires all meetings to be held onsite.

It includes a 10,000-sq.ft. ballroom and five breakout rooms that can be sectioned as needed. The center can host groups ranging from less than two dozen up to several thousand employees and guests such as prospects and customers. The kitchen caters business meetings, retirement parties, community outreach events and training sessions. The conference facilities are also available to nonprofit organizations with ties to BCBSF.

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