Dining halls for employees making comeback in Japanese companies

TOKYO, July 1 Kyodo - The food served up in company dining halls used to be cheap but was not quite as good as employees had hoped for.

But now a growing number of Japanese companies are reestablishing dining halls,
or setting them up for the first time, with an emphasis on meals created with
the welfare of employees in mind and on promoting interaction among them.

They are improving the variety and quality of their dishes and offering
healthier meals in an effort to keep employees in good physical condition.

Some Japanese companies closed or scaled down their in-house restaurants,
resort facilities and dormitories following the collapse of the bubble economy
in the early 1990s. But many are now steadily reestablishing dining halls and
offering amenities to employees against the backdrop of an economic recovery.

Recruit Co., a major recruitment and human resources company, opened four
dining halls for some 6,000 employees in January on the occasion of relocating
its flagship operation to a skyscraper adjacent to JR Tokyo Station.

It occupies the 23rd to 41st floors and the eating facilities are on the top
floor where about 20 kinds of fare are laid out in buffet style, including
broiled fish, seafood pasta, curry and rice, salads and boiled food.

The cost of a regular lunch is 600 yen, while a lesser amount of food taken on
small plates costs 450 yen.

Recruit decided to establish the restaurant named ''Sorabako'' (sky box) to
allow as many employees as possible to have lunch in the building. They can
also get a sweeping view of Tokyo's townscape and the Rainbow Bridge on a sunny
day.
It divided up the use of elevators to ease congestion during lunch hours.
Rieko Oka of the general affairs department said employee interaction was
scarce before the company's relocation because office departments and sections
were decentralized. She said the company wanted to set up a place where
employees could communicate with each other more easily.
Temporary staffing company Pasona Inc. set up an office in the New Marunouchi
Building in Tokyo last fall and established an employee dining hall there. It
had a restaurant serving food at night in another building prior to its move to
the new building. Employees can now have lunch and dinner at the new place.
Keisuke Nemoto, chief of the public relations department, said Pasona wanted to
set up ''a space where employees can establish communication'' with each other.
Particularly popular with women who account for about 60 percent of the company
workforce is the health-conscious menu centered on salad.
Leading general trading firm Mitsubishi Corp. is scheduled to reopen a dining
room in a building near its head office in Tokyo's Marunouchi district for the
first time in about six years. It closed the restaurant in March 2003 due to
reconstruction work on the building that housed it.
Mitsubishi decided to restore it for the sake of its employees as well as
others within group corporations and those on loan from other companies who
need a place where they can gather freely. Alcoholic beverages will also be
available in the evening.
The launching in April of specific employee physical examinations designed to
monitor the so-called metabolic syndrome is also likely to accelerate moves by
such corporate dining halls to offer low calorie food.
Employees suspected of suffering from the syndrome, such as those who have high
blood pressure or are overweight, face a greater risk of diabetes and heart
ailments or having a stroke if they refuse to receive treatment.
Yuichi Ikeda, an executive officer of Shidax Food Service Corp. which
undertakes the running of employee dining halls for corporations, said, ''The
role of dining rooms will undergo a major change with the start of specific
physical checkups. Measures to deal with metabolic syndrome will become central
to the business of employee dining halls.''
==Kyodo