I FED THE LAW AND THE LAW DEFINITELY WON. Flik International’s dining operation at Manhattan law firm Cleary Gottlieb emphasizes being in sync with the values and tastes of the firm’s dynamic young population core.

Source: Flik International

Serving the clientele at high-end Manhattan law firms is a demanding job. The assignment demands that the provider not only serve food that can compete with the street — and we're talking restaurants on Manhattan streets in the heart of the financial district — but also can seamlessly accommodate the value-added aspects of the client culture.

That is what Flik International does in its operation at the New York offices of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, a heavyweight law firm with offices worldwide that works on major corporate transactions as well as litigation and investigations in the financial world.

Cleary Gottlieb's operation in the Lower Manhattan financial district is located at One Liberty Plaza, where it occupies ten floors of a modern building with a 360-degree panoramic view of New York City and New Jersey.

The office has a population more than 1,200, including approximately 450 attorneys, many of them young professionals with specific tastes and expectations.

FAST FACTS Name: Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP Location: 39th floor of One Liberty Plaza, New York City Building Population: 1,200+ Meal Counts: 250-275 (breakfast), 550-625 (lunch), 150-225 (dinner) Flik Management: Adam Freed (VP-Culinary Development), Mark Paolini (regional exec. chef), Juan Carlos Melgarejo (café manager)

For Cleary Gottlieb at Liberty Plaza, Flik manages a main café that offers breakfast, lunch and dinner to the the firm's employees, as well as a substantial onsite catering service, including servicing the food and beverage needs of the building's conference center.

Flik's operations at Cleary Gottlieb are heavily geared around the expectations of young customers, even though they constitute only about a third of the total population.

March of the Millennials

“Millennials — people in their 20s and early 30s — are the crux of the population,” says Adam Freed, vice president of creative development for Flik, who also oversees the Cleary account. “They don't mind paying more as long as what they get what they perceive to be healthful, sourced in the right way and in line with their environmental goals. And that is how we position everything here. That is the mindset. We are there to serve them.”

“The hospitality component needs to be more than about just satisfying a need,” Freed adds. “It has to be innovative, exciting, and needs to really have a social aspect.”

Even for older customers, the strategies used to appeal to Millennials often work. “The messages of healthfulness, nostalgia and fun are appealing,” Freed says.

STAR FOR A DAY. One regular lunchtime feature at the Cleary Gottlieb operation is Consuela’s Café, a mutable serving station that features dishes made and served by non-culinary Flik staffers like cashiers. It serves as a way to highlight associates and make a connection with the customers.

Photo: Lawn

To meet these expectations, many of the ingredients used to make the dishes served in the Cleary Gottlieb dining operations come from local producers and from sources with impeccable credentials. “The components each need to have a story behind them and the story needs to have a social correctness,” Freed emphasizes.

Another expectation is that the dining operation accommodates a nontraditional perspective on the workday. Unlike the “9-to-5” stereotype that assumes a compliant onsite dining clientele, the young associates at Cleary Gottlieb have a flexible attitude toward work and play that requires buy-in from the onsite dining provider.

“Millennials don't see work as putting in eight hours and then leaving,” Freed says. “Instead, they leave for periods to work out or engage in social activities but then come back and work til 9 or 10 in the evening. They have lots of ‘street smarts’ that make them very aware of what is going on all around the building in the larger environment. This means we have to earn their business by reflecting their values.”