I’ve had many corporate speaking engagements in a lunch-and-learn format. At 12:00pm, attendees come into the room, grab some lunch, and sit down. At 12:15pm I begin a 45-minute session on Six Simple Rules for a Better Life—either an overview of all of the rules, or a focused session on one of the rules.
The lunches vary. Often, the firms will have a platter of sandwiches. Occasionally there will be bowls of salad. Most often, the meal is pizza.
That pizza is served will inevitably result in a comment and a laugh when we start to talk about healthy eating during the “Be Healthy” segment. My response is, “Eating pizza every day is not a good thing. There’s nothing wrong with eating pizza once in a while.”
When I refer to eating pizza every day, I’m speaking from experience. During my first few years working in New York City after college, I ate pizza nearly every day. Two slices made for a cheap and delicious meal. And I figured a pretty well-balanced one at that: bread (grain), cheese (protein), and tomato sauce (vegetable).
At that time, I didn’t know about the importance of a lower-fat diet (the amount of cheese I was eating didn’t fit that bill, especially those extra-cheese slices at “Famous Original Ray’s”), and although whole wheat had been my sandwich bread of choice by then, I was eating a ton of white flour in those many pizza slices. All these years later, the tomato sauce still comes up a winner due its lycopene content, but there isn’t that much sauce on most slices.
The companies where I speak choose pizza for those lunch-and-learns for the same reason that I chose pizza back in the day: it’s cheap, easy, and almost everyone loves it. And the low cost is particularly appealing during the prolonged economic slump.
Here’s my question/challenge to you: What is a cheap, easy, delicious, and healthful lunch that a company can bring in? If you solve this, you might be able to create a successful catering business for yourself. I mean it!
Please join the conversation with your comments…