Photos by Caitlin Abrams
IDS Crystal Court
Office workers gather in the IDS Crystal Court to lunch.
Man, I miss skyway lunch.
I really miss Allie’s Deli in the Rand Tower, which was the most solid lunch in the skyway, in my not-so-humble opinion. Solid in that you could count on it: the best white chicken–laden chili with saltines every week, the same homey chef’s salad pushing up against a clear plastic clamshell, or a sizable French dip on doughy white bread, most for under $10. After tallying and bagging up your lunch at the register, owner Scott Robinson (pictured below with co-owner Nicole Allie) always handed it to you with real eye contact, a genuine smile, and a sincere “We appreciate you” to send you on your way. This exchange and the good food were a welcome break in the day, an escape from the bosses, and a moment to gossip with the steno pool. When we all left the skyways, Allie’s closed, as did so many other skyway restaurants during the long pandemic days.
Scott Robinson (pictured right with co-owner Nicole Allie)
Since then, of course, lunch has changed along with the rest of our working lives. I took an informal radio poll a while back, and it seemed that the work-from-home set was mostly eating leftovers from the fridge or using their lunch break to take a long walk and then eating something random, like a hard-boiled egg and a jar of olives, during Zooms. Or they were skipping lunch and just getting up from the desk to eat bites of ice cream in two-hour intervals (ahem).
But I think we underestimate the power of lunch to bring back downtown. As companies are faced with trying to find ways to retain their current employees and create a new cohesive office culture, I truly believe they should think about lunch.
First of all, lunchflation is real (and I didn’t even make up that word). Eating your leftovers at home is much less expensive than grabbing lunch from the skyways. We used to use the $10 lunch as a benchmark—anything much over that was trying too hard, and we’d walk one skyway over to find something comparable for less. Now, that price point is nearly impossible to hit. Never mind that there aren’t enough counters open to make lunch pricing competitive; these eateries are raising prices just to keep up with supply chain issues and labor costs.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Potbelly raised prices 5.4 percent in February. Starbucks also announced that it would be accelerating its price hikes. And Square reports that a bowl of salad is up 11 percent over last year, with sandwiches up 14 percent. Of course, you can bring your lunch from home, but let’s be clear that grocery store prices also are up—8.6 percent from year-ago levels, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then there are the gas dollars and the parking or the rail/bus fees, which people were saving during that WFH life, that also make coming back to work even more expensive than before.
More tables are being used than last month, if you’re looking for a positive spin.
More tables are being used than last month, if you’re looking for a positive spin.
So, we have sparsely populated skyways and a downtown restaurant scene that can’t recover without returning office workers. We have workers who are worried about the expense of coming back to the office. And we have companies trying to create an attractive culture to keep workers. Could a lot of fears and worries be softened by solving/buying lunch?
I’ve heard from a few restaurants that they have been saved this winter by large catering orders from companies trying to woo back office workers. Let’s keep that up. Commit to Tuesday lunches in the office, catered by a locally owned small business. Maybe hand out $20 gift cards on Wednesdays at lunch for a different local spot each week. Bosses should be budgeting for lunch meetings because the only other reason to come to work, besides food, is to see your coworkers.
Lunch is nourishment in the midst of the workday. You get to step away from the screen and break bread with your cohorts so that you can refresh and have the momentum to move forward again. I hope companies big and small recognize the power of the handshake deal with the big and small restaurants in the skyways and beyond. You get what you give.
