How providing good food boosts Care.com's RTO strategy

• Key insight: Learn how curated meals are reshaping return-to-office engagement and workplace design.  
• Expert quote: Wes Burke (CPO): Prioritize "environments as destinations" to drive voluntary in‑office attendance.  
• Supporting data: ezCater Rollout tripled Monday breakfast attendance at two locations.  
• Source: Bullets generated by AI with editorial review

Care.com is on a mission to create an RTO-friendly work environment. Providing employees with six free meals a month through a partnership with ezCater is an enticing part of their initiative to keep employees showing up.  

The company has adopted a three-day in-person schedule for those in the vicinity of their four domestic offices, but attendance is not mandatory. To promote connection, Care.com has explored ways to make the office a place employees want to be through intentional design and perks. 

"We started to rethink environment and enablement," says Wes Burke, Care.com's chief people officer. "How do we create environments as a destination — places that people want to come to and be a part of?" 

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Providing food was part of the strategy, including monthly Monday breakfasts, lunches at monthly town halls and for various cultural holidays. But despite good intentions, Care's initial process of ordering from the same places and disjointed tracking led to uninspiring results and a drain on operations. 

So in November 2024, its director of workplaces, Jacob Davis, sought out a more streamlined solution in ezCater, which provides multiple local restaurant options for each office, as well as centralized management of ordering and expenses. The impacts of combining face-to-face connection with good food have been felt across the company: A recent case study shows Monday breakfast attendance tripled at two locations, town hall attendance has doubled, and the team in charge saves 100 hours of administrative work. 

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Beyond day-to-day connection, ezCater helps Care.com prioritize inclusivity with its online selection tools, which can narrow down restaurants by cuisine type and dietary needs, as well as specific business-owner populations. 

"We make a point to celebrate multicultural events like Hispanic Heritage Month, and when we do that, we focus on making sure that we're using, for that example, a Latinx-owned business," Burke says. "In February, we focus on Black-owned businesses. We try to make sure that we're very intentional around those offerings, and then where we can bring in further multicultural elements, like trying different foods. With ezCater, we're able to easily source and identify those things."

In addition to connection and collaboration, providing meal options for employees also helps them make the most of their time in the office, Burke says. He notes that restaurant vendors typically manage food delivery and setup, adding to the low lift on the part of the company and workers. 

"Seventy-plus percent of people who work here are working parents, so everybody's stretched for time," he says. "We are trying to get as much time in the office as possible, so being able to provide some level of flexibility and reliability is critical for us." 

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In terms of the employee-value proposition, the importance of making life better for employees whose job is caring for others cannot be overstated, Burke says. 

"[It's about coming to the office] and knowing you're taken care of," he says. "We want to make sure it is comfortable and inviting."