Delivering culture through food

This is a sponsored episode brought to you in association with Deliveroo for Work.

Spencer Walker is the global director of Deliveroo for Work.

The podcast has returned several times to the idea of food as a cultural trigger, something that catalyses connection and allows cohesion. We explore that idea further this week with Spencer Walker from Deliveroo. Spencer runs Deliveroo For Work the workplace service provided by the delivery firm. You can find out more at their website: Deliveroo for Work

The Deliveroo Feeding Employee Engagement Report

More about food, rituals and culture 

I mention a book by Robin Dunbar and Samantha Rockey, it’s this: The Social Brain – Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, Robin Dunbar. They talk about giving curry to bond teams (because the sharing plates require people to pass them around). Hear them talking about it here.

Transcript

[00:00:00] This is Eat Sleep Work Repeat. It’s a podcast about workplace culture. Now, one of the themes we’ve returned to a lot recurrently over the last few years is discussions about food as something that creates culture. Something that holds culture together, the benefits of sort of breaking bread and getting together with teams.

I wanted to dive into that a bit more ’cause it’s one of the areas that. People really get in touch with stories and anecdotes about their own experience. So to do that, I thought I would track down a great guest who would give me some more on that. Today I am gonna be talking to Spencer Walker from Deliveroo.

He’s going to give us a perspective of food, the role it plays inside organisations. I wonder if to kick off then, Spencer, you could introduce far better than I’ve done. You could introduce who you are and what you do.

[00:00:52] Spencer Walker: Yeah. Cool. Thanks for having me. So my name’s Spencer. I am at Deliveroo. Been there about eight and a half years.
I currently lead our corporate B2B business, which is Deliveroo for work. We then, uh, before that I, I ran our London business for about four years. So signing and working with restaurants that people certainly in London may know and love, like Daum or Farmer Jay or pizza Pilgrims. And then before that I was a drummer in an international touring rock band.

[00:01:21] Bruce Daisley: Hang on, that’s too good to pass up. So go on. Talk me through what you went from being in a rock band to working corporate life. Talk to me what you learned about being in a band first.

[00:01:35] Spencer Walker: So I think might be generous to be calling Deliveroo corporate at this point. Right. But I think if you, yeah it was definitely a pivot. I think if you think about Deliveroo more as a startup, it probably makes more sense. So the first thing is that anyone who who has ever tried to start a band will know that actually it’s, it’s really entrepreneurial. You have to be, and without giving away my age, it was even more entrepreneurial back then.
When, you know, to get a gig that involved. Standing in a phone box and basically getting a yellow pages and ringing every single person connected to a venue that you could possibly find in order to try and get someone to give you a gig. So there was a lot of hustle involved. You really had to want it.

We then, we particularly did things in a very DIY way. So we self produced, we, you know, we self recorded , we built our own studio in the garden of the house we lived in. And we also then ended up taking that one step further and. Really modeling the band as a startup business. So I went out and raised investment and we ran everything very self-contained, didn’t work with really any labels.

And so like the transition then was not quite as extreme as possibly it sounds if you just think about being a drummer to then going and working in a startup. And I think, I think from a tech perspective, it’s also interesting ’cause we were there right at this. Tipping point from analog to digital, both in terms of recording, in terms of music consumption, and in terms of all the kind of social media and everything that went around music at the time.

Bruce Daisley: I get that. I get, and I get actually thinking about it as a startup, you see how musical acts use social media and now exactly like a startup. So you know, working at Deliveroo For Work. Do you wanna explain to us what Deliveroo for Work is?

Spencer Walker: Yeah, so, Deliveroo, probably everyone knows what that is. Deliveroo For Work is a, uh, your kind of at work Food Perk provider.
So at core like a lot of great products, it’s a really simple product. We have an allowance functionality, which means that if you are a, a business, you can become a client of Deliveroo for work. And you can give your employees an allowance. Now that could be used for a multitude of things, but one example could be if you have lots of people who do late night working, for example. Banks, professional services, you know, law firms, consultancies, et cetera. Instead of then having hundreds and hundreds of expenses to, to pull together and to go through at the end of a month, uh, you can just use, you know, your employees will have an allowance.

They’ll toggle it on charges to the company, uh, they’ll get their food, and then the company just has one invoice at the end of the month. So, there’s a, there’s an expense streamlining service that’s really helpful. But the other cool thing and maybe one that is more on the topic of what we’re gonna talk about today, is that you can also use it for lots of other things.

So we have a lot of clients that use us for group lunches, for team lunches, or even for then things in the office that really enhance s culture. Like for example you know, we have florists now on the platform. So we have companies that use us to send fresh flowers on a Monday. We do. Pantry restock.

If I think about my first, my only real temp job, before I went full-time into music after university, I was the guy in the office who had to go and get the milk every day, and I had to go and get petty cash and then go and buy milk. And then I came back and I had to get a receipt, and I had to process it in a certain way.

You know? Now we [00:05:00] just live in a world where you could put late night working team lunches, flowers. Milk all on one invoice that comes, uh, at the end of the month. And it just kind of makes everyone’s life easier.
[00:05:10] Bruce Daisley: And I guess a lot of those things are sort of some of the ways that we might bring the day-to-day experience of work to life.
Can I ask, before we go into discussion about some of the ways that you do that, can I ask how you think about creating culture in your own team? How you think about sort of building a Deliveroo for work culture as a leader yourself?

[00:05:30] Spencer Walker: Yeah. Yeah, it was really interesting coming into this role.
Which I did about a couple of years ago. So I’d, I’d actually formed what I, what I, what I think was, was a good kind of thriving culture in my team before, but it was a bit easier because everyone was in the same place. All of my people were in London and we all worked together and there was a lot of face time and you could, you could get everyone in a room if you needed to, so it just made it that little bit easier to manage.
I, I’ll give you an example, which sounds incredibly dry, but I think is actually quite. Good and important. So when I moved into this role where I have teams and all of the markets Deliveroo operates, so you know, the majority of my team sits outside of the UK or outside of London. I actually really struggled all the things all the things that have worked really well in London didn’t seem to work so well when applied to a global team.
And I had a really great reverse mentoring moment where uh, someone I mentored, I was telling him about this challenge and he recommended me a book, uh, called The Culture Map by Aaron Meyer. Mm-hmm. Which I found really useful. Mm. And he had found useful. And, uh, this was a good gateway to me.

Then thinking about communication and different styles and how clearly, you know, English people, maybe particularly. We communicate in a very weird way where ob obviously, I, I love when you actually translate a lot of things that people think English people are saying and it’s, it’s normally nothing like what we’re actually saying.
And so what I started doing with my team is I send a newsletter every Friday. So every Friday afternoon without fail, I send a newsletter that summarizes things that have happened that week. Great work that’s happened, recognize people who’ve done great work, use it to reinforce messages. Mo mostly to reinforce the context behind why we’re doing what we’re doing.

And actually, I guess the, the, the main thing that I think we’ve achieved with this is consistency. And what we have at Deliveroo is we operate in a, an incredibly fast-paced, really ambiguous, often environment. Something that really helps my team and and really helps me is consistency and stability when it comes to culture.
And so they know that this is coming every week. No one replies, definitely thought for a while, no one was reading it, but when I go and visit markets, the first thing anyone will tell me is We love that you send that email every week. Just like it keeps us in contact with everything. We know what’s going on, and it’s become a real sort of cultural calling card.
And I’ll often talk about what I’m cooking for dinner that night as well, or what the kids have been winding me up about.

[00:08:09] Bruce Daisley: That brings me onto the idea of culture being sort of, held together quite often by food or by big significant contributions that, that food has to cultures, and obviously that’s the business you are in. Do, do you practice any of that yourself? Do you use food yourself to try and hold the culture together to get, to create moments of togetherness or do you use cotton food like that?

[00:08:32] Spencer Walker: Yeah, I think we, like food is, food is at the heart of everything we do at Deliveroo. It’s the thread that runs through the whole business.
And, and you know, that’s been from Will our founder all the way down, you know, for all the time that I’ve been there. You know, to the point where on a office wall there is just a massive neon sign saying always be eating. You know, it, it might be weird for people who think less about food, but we think about food a [00:09:00] lot.
One, one of the things that I think if you were to ask anyone who’s been at Deliveroo over the years, they would talk about, um, Friday lunch, which was kind of a legendary thing. Uh, so when I joined this was we’d actually get to lunchtime on Friday, usually at that point. Usually all of us would then have to go out and do deliveries in, in, uh, in Central London because we probably couldn’t get enough riders out on the road to deal with peak.
And so you’d have lots of like Deliveroo employees going out and we’d do some orders and that was great. And you’d also obviously get all the benefits of primary research and you’d get close to the customer and that was all good. And then you’d come back to the office and, um, there would just be a, a mountain of food from our restaurant partners.
And it just was this. Like it was, sorry, on the one hand it was like the Hunger Games. It was relentless and hilarious to watch and quite intimidating probably for anyone who was new. Certainly was for me when I joined. Uh, and you had to have sharp elbows. But the best thing about it is you had this amazing, really [00:10:00] non-hierarchical, everyone talking to everyone about food.
Just obsessing about like, what is this thing? You have to try this. You meet people from different teams and you just take that moment where everyone comes together and they have that kind of release. After a long week, you then go back and finish the week, but it was the, it was such a. Key cultural moment for us.
And you know, that’s continued. And over time, as we’ve got bigger, it’s evolved. And now actually we use the Deliveroo for work product. Everyone gets to choose their own thing. Okay. I think that was an interesting shift when that happened. Definitely some oldies who, you know, we maybe lamented the loss of this quite weird moment.
But fundamentally when you have kind of. A thousand people trying to go for the same burgers, it does actually get potentially dangerous at that point. So, you know, we now will order our own thing, but everyone still comes together to eat. Uh, and it is a moment in the week where no matter what market you’re in.
You know that’s Friday lunch is sort of sacred at Deliveroo.

[00:10:57] Bruce Daisley: Right. Uh, I remember reading a book by [00:11:00] Robin Dunbar and Samantha Rockey that talked about how they ran dinners as part of like a leadership program. They did. And they specifically ensured that they had curry actually, but they specifically used sharing dishes.
Yeah. ’cause they knew those interactions of people passing things to each other. It’s crazy. Just all of them added little moments of connection and that idea of using food for. Team connection and team community seems to be a real important part of the role that food can play. I, I talked to someone at Radio One who talked about, like, they had these pizza evenings and you know, I’ve, I’ve talked many times about crisp Thursday, which was one business I I met that just introduced four 30 on Thursday.
They came together and they had some Pringles.

[00:11:41] Spencer Walker: We didn’t do crisps, but if I think back there was a good three or four years where 11:00 AM every Friday we’d have. About five or six buckets of KFC wings arrived in the office and I, I assume that was Will ordering them.
I actually dunno who ordered them, but that became a thing, right? It was just kind of, and you know, that was probably back when it was a younger [00:12:00] company and maybe Thursday night had been a little heavier. So, you know, your Friday morning wings, it didn’t matter actually who you were. Everyone went and got a wing.
’cause it was also just that moment where you come together. People talk about what did they do yesterday? They look forward to what’s gonna happen. They’d talk about what they’re gonna order for Friday lunch. And we had, you know, we had that, we have food at every event we do. And then actually a really interesting one, which, you know, those are all things that fundamentally the business is investing in food.

Where I think it gets really interesting is where food then. Becomes a really organic part of the culture and it’s, it’s, uh, it’s adding to the culture without actually that investment. We have a, a Slack channel called Food Nerds. Food Nerds is pretty much the most engaged with channel at Deliveroo, and it is just restaurant recommendations.
But again, it’s this like magical place where if you want a recommendation for any city in the world, you will find it in food nerds to the point where. Last time I went in there, I think the [00:13:00] data science team has actually now got it integrated with Looker. So, you know, we use Looker. You can actually go in there and run a search and you can say, uh, I’m going to Marseille next week, pull up all recommendations from the past, you know, 10 years for Marseille.

And you’ll just have this like really personal context. It leads to these interactions where you look and you’ve got CFO talking to software engineer, talking to person and operations team, all connecting and meeting at this one level through this kind of shared love of food.

[00:13:32] Bruce Daisley: Because aside from that discovery part, I get that, you know, like it’s sort of part of making the places we go seem richer, but. Couldn’t you potentially say if I was being pro provocative? Well, look, you know, you’ve recognized the value of food. Yeah. What you should do here is invest in that. Having your own onsite canteen, to some extent. Isn’t this just the use case for having a canteen?

[00:13:51] Spencer Walker: Yeah. I think, look, F first thing is for some businesses that will be viable.
For some it won’t. But I think you’re you. What I [00:14:00] like about this point is the idea of how. A business sets up their office to enable this coming together through food. And so if I think, again, to start with our office, we are very lucky. We, we have an office right on the Thames. Uh, it’s very cool.
We’ve got two floors. The prime real estate in that office is the windows that look out in the river and on both floors. That is like, that is all kitchen. You know, that is not someone’s office. It’s not the, you know, CEO’s office and the CFO’s office. It’s just massive, really nicely laid out kitchen spaces, and that’s that, that they are the focal points of our office.
So even though we don’t have a canteen, I think if you are a company thinking about this, the first thing I would think about is what does your shared space look like? What have you got there to enable people to actually eat and come together? It sounds simple, but do you have plates? Do you have forks?
Do you have like [00:15:00] condiments? Do you make it somewhere where you are encouraging them to come and spend time and connect and then, I think there’s a second point more specifically on the canteen, which is, I think if you’re a business, ask your employees, you know, we. And I think we’ll talk a little bit about the rapport we’ve done, but in that report, one of the things we asked employees at a wide range of clients was how do you rate what would your preferred at work food experience be?
And, it came back pretty clearly that delivered food was three times more preferable than a canteen. And then I think, um. I think, you know what, what you potentially miss with a canteen is this this idea of autonomy and maybe a bit more agency about the about the choice and selection of food.
And while having food is good and having a space is good, there is this kind of secret source where you give people the choice of what they can bring [00:16:00] to the office. That I think unlocks. Even more cultural kind of engagement benefits.

[00:16:06] Bruce Daisley: Okay, that’s interesting. ’cause like, whenever I think of culture, I, I think community. I think autonomy. I think identity. And so, you know, so the fact that to some extent the community comes baked in, the moment you’re sitting down, you’re taking time to eat food. Uh, the autonomy, the idea that you’re choosing the food yourself plays a, a big part in that. Is there an element of identity there?
Is there an element of I’m just thinking, we use. Pizza is a celebration food, don’t we? But you know, can go beyond that. Can, can food be a signifier of identity? I just, top of my head, I think my grandmother was German and uh, she used to be insistent that we eat German sausage all the time.
’cause it was a way to signal that like a German ness was there. Vegetarian now. It’s sort of, it, it, it had a unexpected consequence. But yeah, food as a signifier of identity seems a really important thing [00:17:00] and I just wonder if that contributes to how we use food as a cultural vehicle.

[00:17:06] Spencer Walker: Yeah. I think it’s a, it’s a great show and I, I, you know, I I I’m sad that you no longer get to enjoy the German sausages of your youth.
Yeah, I think when we. When we think about food, we often seek out food that reminds us of home. We think about kind of, uh, nostalgic flavors and tastes, and this really actually came to life recently. We had a couple of months ago we had a, an a, a focus group come into the office. So employees of clients that we work with, who we invited in to kind of just talk about.
Their at work, food experiences, their use of the product, you know, always looking to learn from the customer. And there was this amazing session where there was a lady who was a banker, worked in investment bank doing far too many late nights. Um, and she she talked about we asked her to tell us about.
What’s a good example of a, what’s an example of a good [00:18:00] at work food experience? And she talked about a day when she’d been feeling she was just feeling really low. She was feeling really homesick. She’s from Sri Lanka and she just wanted. Tamil cuisine, that’s what she wanted. She wanted something that would remind her of home, and she has an allowance.
She went on to oo and we, by chance had, recently signed a restaurant called Karapincha in Canary Wharf. She ordered from Karapincha and, you know, she said this. It felt like a hug. It just felt like being at home and it gave me something on that day. And then there was another person in the focus group who immediately piped up and said, I know exactly what you mean when I ordered din taifu.
It makes me think of my food that I had back in Singapore. And I think that the point here is. When you give employees the ability to bring, uh, to order their own food, to bring their own food to work and to to, to showcase that and to enjoy it, they get to actually [00:19:00] bring something that is really relevant to them.
And it’s, it’s really catering to that individual rather than you trying to second guess what you think will be most meaningful for them in this moment. It is really unlikely that anyone in the organization would know that. Tamil food at that time is what that person needed to get through the day, but they’d enabled her to actually make that choice because of the decision she was able to make with that food perk.
And I think the second thing that’s really interesting about it is there’s a really nice inclusivity point here, which is. By enabling people to bring their own, food that reminds them of home and to really represent their own culture. It brings them together with their team. And what we hear from when we talk to employees about this is they say, it helps ’em to feel seen and it helps ’em to feel recognized to get back to your pizza point.
I would encourage any team leader out there who instinctively [00:20:00] orders pizzas for the team when they’re celebrating something to really think about who’s in their team. 40% of London professionals were not born in London. It’s entirely possible that well, I love a pizza. Doesn’t mean you love a pizza, Bruce, and it doesn’t mean, you know, the next person might not actually wanna celebrate with dim sum or the next person might wanna celebrate with something else.
And actually. Really leaning into that would create not only this opportunity to celebrate with food, but to also celebrate in a really inclusive way with your team.

[00:20:30] Bruce Daisley: It almost like you could run something like, sort of like the baked sale aesthetic where different groups say, we wanna bring this cuisine to the event.
All right.

[00:20:40] Spencer Walker: Okay. Yeah. And actually even, you know, gets back to the, the core thing, uh, that we usually get back to, which is like. Talk to your team, ask them, you know, the default. So many times we default to these things, especially at work. It’s, you know, this idea of, you know, pizza celebration. It is really ingrained.
And, and if there are any pizza partners I’ve worked with, obviously I love pizza. Just throwing it out there. [00:21:00] Love lots of our pizza restaurants. But there are other things and there there are things that may be more meaningful.

[00:21:05] Bruce Daisley: Now you put out this feeding employee engagement report. I took a look at that and actually it’s fascinating to explore it, but if you were gonna call out a couple of the big headlines, what do you think for you stands out as the big findings of that report?

[00:21:18] Spencer Walker: Yeah, I think, uh, if I was to, you know, if, if I was to pick one it would be and, and really one of the reasons we put it out there because I think we were a bit surprised by some of the things that we heard from employees. The one that really stuck with me was when they were asked to rate their perks employees were rating food perks as highly as health and dental benefits, and twice as high as gym subsidies.
And while I am someone who, who has never been to a gym, uh, I’m not a gym guy that did surprise me because when I. Think about what I hear on the desks and when I’ve looked at conventional rewards packages, I feel like gym is a pretty [00:22:00] solid, nailed on thing that companies will go to. And I also think that the the health and dental benefits being kind of ranked at the same level.

We possibly hint at a second thing, which is this is there a slight shift in generational Yeah. Viewpoints on what is perceived to be valuable versus what may have previously been perceived to be valuable?

[00:22:23] Bruce Daisley: Yeah. I saw Gen Zs were really mm-hmm. Interested in food as a benefit and, and I just wondered whether it was part of that TikTok ification of work that because people now are seeing other people’s work experience to a greater extent than ever before.

That if you’ve got one friend in. 20 who gets food provided, then suddenly that becomes like social currency. It becomes, you know, an illustration that they may be in the office two days or three days, but this food provided there, or whatever it is. It just something that was, was really hitting with Gen Zs as they were coming into the workplace.

[00:22:54] Spencer Walker: Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s spot on and I think the, um, I think what, what we see coming through [00:23:00] from that demographic is, and, and to be clear, I think it’s. When I say that we’ve also gotta be very careful about, I, I think Gen Z people talk a lot about Gen Z and they like to think about the whole of Gen Z together.
And I feel like there’s a, you know, this is not a, a, an idea that all people in Gen Z are the same. What we do see is that there is definitely more of a desire for personalization of perks. Maybe people being slightly less content with the idea of. Quite generic memberships and benefits. We see more of a sort of sharper focus on women’s health.
We see more of a focus on shared parental policies even people being more vocal about what they want to see in terms of workplace setup, a workplace that is geared towards movement and collaboration. But I also think what’s quite interesting, about this personalization point. Food being a good example [00:24:00] is, I’m not sure I can, I, I think it’s hard to, in some ways disagree with this, right?
If you think about workplace, but I don’t think this is necessarily a generational thing. I think we’ve just got potentially a group of people who are now feeling more empowered to actually talk about what they want rather than just accept what is given. And if you think about. Workplace perks that is part of your overall reward given to you by a company.
It, there will always be perks that don’t resonate or are irrelevant or not appropriate for some people in a, in a team or in a workforce. I don’t think it’s crazy. We should try and think about perks that really do speak to more people. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a, a particularly generational point.

[00:24:46] Bruce Daisley: Yeah, it’s a really interesting challenge because quite often, you know, we, we try to separate and we say, look, perks do not necessarily equal a straight line through to better culture. Yeah. Like if you, if you dial up the travel allowance or if you, uh, if you dial up specific [00:25:00] things, it normally doesn’t have a straight line correlation.
But the interesting thing about food is that potentially it sits slightly aside from that, through those things you’ve mentioned, it’s a, it’s. You achieve an a, a goal obliquely of getting teams to sit down and build community. They, they sort of come together. There’s that autonomy element where people feel like they’re making decisions themselves.
That identity element, probably the third contribution. People feeling like this is something they’re able to have an impact on themselves. So it seems like. It’s an untypical perk to some extent ’cause it does achieve some of your cultural goals. I guess you as a leader, you’ve, you see that yourself.
Did you use food yourself internally?

[00:25:43] Spencer Walker: Yeah. It without, it is literally the default, right? If all else fails, I think what can we do? What? Like how do we just bring to people together round a table? Whether it’s a cake, whether it’s biscuits, it actually doesn’t matter. It’s just that thing where you get them off the desk.
Round a table. Everyone eats. If you’re [00:26:00] on, if you’re sitting remotely, you choose a time. Everyone comes on. You talk about food. But I think the difference is, most perks by nature are transactional. Food is emotional. If you sit down with someone and you break bread, fundamentally, you will have a different conversation with that person than if you were sitting across a desk in a meeting room.
And so companies that can. Think about how to leverage that. You know, you, everyone has a lunch hour. While some are respected more than others, there is a time of day where people will pause, they’ll break, they’ll eat food. Thinking about how companies can lean into that moment in the day feels like quite a sensible thing to do.
That is one moment where. It’s the only moment of the day when your employees are kind of deliberately not meant to be thinking about work. So how can you support them and how can you make the most of that moment where they can make friendships and they can connect with people on a different level, all of which is only going to enhance.
Their productivity and their [00:27:00] feeling of kind of belonging at work.

[00:27:02] Bruce Daisley: It’s interesting ’cause you could give them lectures about you should take a break. Yeah. You should take a lunch break and then all of a sudden you’ve created a means for them to feel like they’ve chosen to take that break you. You’ve actually put the break within their their day and I think you have to role model it as well.

[00:27:16] Spencer Walker: Right. This is something that again, I think has been frankly easy to do at Deliveroo because Will has always been. Like the food. He a, he loves buying food for people randomly. It’s a thing, you know, you just will turn up and he’ll be like, try this. He’s interested in what everyone eats. I’ll see him walk in the kitchen, even now, like 13 years on.

And if he sees someone eating something interesting, doesn’t matter who they are, what level they are, he’ll go over, he’ll have a conversation, they’ll talk about food, they’ll connect. Like, that’ll be so meaningful for that person and it takes all of the stress away of. How do I have a conversation with someone more senior than me?
It’s like, well, it’s very easy if you’re just discussing what are you eating? What do you think of that? [00:28:00] Have you tried this place? This is just really good, like ways for people to have conversations in a non forced way.

[00:28:08] Bruce Daisley: Thinking about I, I guess food also helps us do that thing that we know we’re meant to do, but we never quite get round to, which is pause, take a break, rest from our work.
How do you think about that?

[00:28:20] Spencer Walker: I think for some people it absolutely does, and I think this is the really cool thing about food. It just meets you where you are. So if you need a break food is absolutely a brilliant enabler to help you to do that. Or if you need fueling up before a spin class, then it also can do that.
We also have this really interesting dynamic where, which we get through and we speak to employees where some of them actually use. Food that they get delivered to them at work as a healthy option. And it’s the thing that will give them their [00:29:00] one or two veggie day. However, however they like to do it.
And they will really, they’ll try and maximize their healthy food through that Deliveroo. Which takes a bit of pressure off them when they get home and what they have to cook that night as they might be getting home late. And then they can just do something simple. So it kind of flips on. It flips the narrative that you might assume of thinking about, you know, Deliveroo equals unhealthy.
Home cooking equals healthy. And we see that coming through in the numbers, right. We’ve had over the last two years. 89% growth in salad deliveries to corporate customers in in the uk. Uh, so like, it’s definitely happening and you, you can also see it on the high street with the emergence of, you know, really great salad brands, uh, and healthy food brands like, you know, attest Salad, project Farmer Jay Eat Active, these great brands that have ballooned over the last kind of five, 10 years.
Because the demand is there for great, healthy food as well. I get it. So basically you can use it to onboard protein before you go to the [00:30:00] gym or you can like you can do whatever. Yeah, and I mean, look, I caught up with the guys from Joe and The Juice the other day. Joe and the Juice, amazing brand. And they’ve they definitely are gym guys.
I may not have been to the gym, but everyone I speak to with Joe and the Juice, they seem very gym. They, they know what the gym is. They talk about, they really talk about this concept of fuel and, and food that kind of they know exactly what they need and what, what protein and you know, it to give them, to maximize their workout.
It can do that in the same way that it can create a rest in the same way that it can, frankly give you comfort. If you’ve had a really rubbish day and you just need a pick me up in the afternoon. I ask a sort of really broad question to finish both in with your Deliveroo for workout on and your hat on.

[00:30:43] Bruce Daisley: As a boss, as a team leader, what do you think employers need to be thinking about going forward? How is the workplace and expectations of employees gonna change? What is thinking about being ready for the next five years? How do you think about that?

[00:30:59] Spencer Walker: If I was to think [00:31:00] about one thing, it would be to do the simple thing and.
To make sure you are talking and asking your teams what they think. Where we’ve made our best decisions is where we talk to our employees rather than doing a detailed exercise theoretically outside of, uh, outside of the kind of employee’s sphere and then expecting that to resonate. You just may be surprised and I think in this time where so much is changing all the time.
It’s probably more important than ever to just go in and sense, check some of the things that you might have assumed were true or had still hold true, and many of them still might. I come back to that stat on food perks being rated as highly as health and dental benefits. Like I was surprised by that.
And I’m in the business of food as a perk. Uh, and so it’s really worth just going in and talking to your employees and making sure that, uh, making sure that you hear them.

[00:31:58] Bruce Daisley: Thank you, Spencer. I’ve loved it. Uh, [00:32:00] I wonder if to if people are interested to find out more whether it’s about your music and your band, or whether it’s about Deliveroo for work or anything, where could people find out more?

[00:32:09] Spencer Walker: You can find us@work.deliveroo.co.uk and we are live in any market that Deliveroo is live in. So for any of your international listeners, Bruce, we are, we are there for them too. And where was your music? We were mostly based in the States.

[00:32:24] Bruce Daisley: Right, okay. So no band name on Spotify. We could seek out.

[00:32:30] Spencer Walker: I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure you can track it down if you want to.

[00:32:33] Bruce Daisley: Thank you so much, Spencer. It’s been a pleasure.

[00:32:36] Spencer Walker: Thank you. Thank you.