Building Community Through Food

Community building is such an important theme that has made its way to the food universe.  In our Silicon Valley restaurant world, the coolest and trendiest eateries sport community tables, which encourage dining together with folks you don’t know.  It’s fun and congenial.  Our idea is building corporate community through food.

We want a company’s employees to look forward to every single meal they eat at work.  And to share the experience with their work community.  So, how do we make that happen?

Our “in conversation” book clubs get the employees reading books written by local authors who actually come and “dish-up” the juicy back stories about how they came to write the book, what inspired them, and how they got their book published.  Of course, we fuse the discussion with lunch served family-style.

What have we been reading?  It’s a genre buffet:  From literary fiction to fantasy to mystery to memoir.  In fact, our last memoir was written by Margaret Zhao, who told us the inspirational story of growing up as a young middle-class child in China after the Mao revolution.

Lloyd had this great idea for us to host a book club where he would arrange for the author to come during the lunch hour to talk about their book and what it means to be a writer.  The book club has turned out to be a great opportunity for our employees to not only learn about writing, but to network with one another.  Each author has been very unique in their own way, with a variety in genre so there is something to interest everyone.  The book club has also provided our company with another venue for further engaging our employees, as well as a way for us to promote our on-site café as we offer lunch from the café during the session. - Joyce Melendez, Thermo Fisher Scientific

Speaking of inspirational, Lauri Pastrone, local to Los Gatos, gave us the perfect gift-giving book.  The cookbook, Share*, is “The cookbook that celebrates our common humanity.”  As Meryl Streep (yes, we’re name-dropping) said in her introduction:  “Nothing more beautifully conveys our interdependence than the food we eat.”  Food unites us all.  This book marries the recipes of celebrities, chefs, and women from war-ravaged countries into a coffee table-worthy celebration of life.  We loved meeting Lori, one of the creative forces behind this product of the heart, while, at the same time, getting some terrific recipes.

Besides book clubs, our community building program includes bringing guest chefs to our locations; as well as inviting employees to submit their favorite seasonal recipes to be prepared by us and, perhaps, served up by an employee in your organization.

Did we whet your appetite for sharing food and creating strong bonds of teamwork yet? 

*Share Cookbook - Published by Kyle Books.  100% of publisher’s profits go to Women for Women International.

A Taste of Things to Come  

Come back by for a recipe and review of what’s now touted as a “healing elixir.”  Spoiler alert:  We’re serving it in Santa Cruz County and sharing Chef Jason’s secret recipe (check out the rave review from The Santa Cruz Sentinel in their June 7 edition).