Marisa describes the unique ways her food team creates an extraordinary experience for in-office employees at Zoox. She and Claude explore how food acts as a central hub for social interaction, and the office kitchen’s vital role in bringing people together while enhancing workplace culture.
Marisa Pozas, Micro Kitchen Operations Manager at Zoox, describes the unique ways her food team creates an extraordinary experience for in-office employees at Zoox. She and Claude explore how food acts as a central hub for social interaction, and the office kitchen’s vital role in bringing people together while enhancing workplace culture.
Zoox is reinventing personal transportation by transforming mobility-as-a-service. They’re developing a fully autonomous, purpose-built fleet designed for AI to drive and humans to enjoy.
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Key Quotes:
“The good thing about our food team is we all come from very diverse backgrounds, whether we've worked in tech or restaurants or Michelin star restaurants, we try to create an experience with all of our past experiences and put 'em together and bring it to life for the employees. I think the thing that's important is every company has a different culture.”
“I think food just brings people together. If you think about food, like when you're entertaining at home, everybody always migrates to the kitchen, right? Same thing here at work. I think food is important. Obviously it's to nourish yourself, but it's also a good place to be. I think a lot of our employees here love to go down at lunch and collaborate and tell stories around our tables.”
“We like our people in house. We like them to come in. We like them to collaborate and we like them to be here. So we try to offer as many perks for them. So they want to come into work and it's exciting for them.”
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00:24 - Quick Hits
03:07 - Marisa’s role
06:52 - Building culture with food
10:40 - Diversifying spend
13:01 - Building the right perks
19:42 - Leaning into new things
28:07 - Where to find Marisa
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[00:00:00] Marisa: Food just brings people together. If you think about food, like when you're entertaining at home, everybody always migrates to the kitchen, right? Same thing here at work. I think food is an important. Obviously it's to nourish yourself, but it's also a good place to be. I think a lot of our employees here love to go down at lunch and collaborate and talk story around our tables.
[00:00:22] Claude: and welcome to Office Libations Unwrapped. I'm your host, Claude Burns, and today I'm here with Marisa Pozas, the MicroKitchens Operations Manager at Zoox. Hey Marissa, how are you doing today?
[00:00:32] Marisa: Doing well. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:35] Claude: Yeah, great. So before we jump into, you know, who you are and what you do, we're going to do a little quick hits segment to get to know you a little bit better. so it's going to be quick, it's going to be fast, it's going to be fun. Coffee or tea? Coffee.
[00:00:48] Marisa: Tea all day.
[00:00:49] Claude: Okay. Do you have a favorite brand or sort of flavor?
[00:00:52] Marisa: Currently it's green, uh, it's tetulia, and it's green tea in the morning and chai in the afternoons.
[00:00:58] Claude: That's awesome. Okay. What's your go to work snack or drink?
[00:01:02] Marisa: Well, this one is always a hard one because I feel like we live in the snack world.
[00:01:06] Claude: Mm hmm.
[00:01:07] Marisa: we're constantly either tasting them. So, it's just really hard to choose, but currently, it's safe to say I visit the micro kitchens daily and eat the vanilla cocoa june yogurt with a sprinkle of nuts on top.
[00:01:20] Claude: Okay. Yeah. I, we, big
[00:01:22] Marisa: daily go to snack.
[00:01:24] Claude: Yep. All right. You're retired. Money is no object. Where do you live?
[00:01:29] Marisa: So, I would like to build little casita houses in blue zone areas. So, if you're familiar with Blue Zones, there's, there's Blue Zones in about five different countries and starting with Italy, Greece, and Costa Rica, I would build little homes in all those little areas. So then friends and family could go travel for holidays, vacation, and just kind of to reboot the souls.
[00:01:56] Claude: I mean, those sound like pretty good locations, so I may take you up on that if you ever get there, um, What's the best meal you've had recently?
[00:02:05] Marisa: Best meal I've had is a butter basted ribeye steak. I don't eat too much meat, but when I do, it has to be ribeye and it has to be butter basted. And just made that the other night with some friends and it was delicious.
[00:02:21] Claude: that, that sounds great. Uh, how was the company?
[00:02:24] Marisa: Company was great.
[00:02:26] Claude: Yeah, that, that I think makes most meals, but I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about
[00:02:30] Marisa: And they've never, they never had a butter basted steak before, so I was able to teach them at the same time. So Of
[00:02:38] Claude: I love cooking, so we could probably talk for hours about that as well. What's the last book you've read?
[00:02:43] Marisa: Book I'm currently reading is the last book of Law of Attraction that you'll ever need to read.
[00:02:49] Claude: Okay.
[00:02:49] Marisa: am in midway.
[00:02:51] Claude: So far, so good.
[00:02:52] Marisa: So far, so good. It's teaching me more of my manifestation skills and journaling, which I need to be better at.
[00:02:59] Claude: Okay. Favorite historical figure, can be dead or alive.
[00:03:04] Marisa: So alive, I'm going to choose the Obamas, my favorite people.
[00:03:08] Claude: That's awesome. Yeah.
[00:03:10] Marisa: And then with Michelle Obama, she just is a great advocate for women. And I love how she is very transparent on her marriage, on how she raises her daughters and just life in general. She's just an inspiration to me.
[00:03:26] Claude: I think a lot of people would agree with you there. Let's learn a little bit more, more about you. What's your role at Zoox?
[00:03:31] Marisa: I oversee about 30 plus micro kitchens here. I work closely with a couple different vendors and we source anywhere from 30 to 50 products, that we produce. Strategically placed in our micro kitchens across all of our sites.
[00:03:48] Claude: And just to give an idea of scope, how many people are you kind of feeding on a daily basis?
[00:03:52] Marisa: Well, it varies from site to site. So here in Foster City, we're about 802 of our biggest campuses. And then, you know, we have remote sites, um, randomly placed in Seattle, San Diego, and they vary anywhere from 35 employees to 100.
[00:04:13] Claude: And you take care of the Foster City locations primarily, or are you overseeing all of the other, uh, locations as well?
[00:04:20] Marisa: All of them. Yep. I work very close with our vendors and make sure they are managing them daily, stalking them daily.
[00:04:28] Claude: so what does Zoox do?
[00:04:31] Marisa: Zoox is an autonomous robot taxi company with the mission of making personal transportation safer, enjoyable for everyone. We have reimagined a vehicle that is focused on safety first and comfort. If you think about it, we're not a car, we don't have a steering wheel, we don't have gas or brake pedals.
[00:04:54] We are simply an autonomous vehicle built for the rider experience.
[00:04:58] Claude: That's awesome. Um, there's been a lot of fun stuff in that space recently. So it's gotta be pretty exciting for you guys.
[00:05:05] Marisa: it's very exciting. I think everybody here is very excited. We love to see them on the roads. It's, it's, it's a nice place to be.
[00:05:13] Claude: Have you written in one?
[00:05:15] Marisa: I have. I actually have ridden a couple different times and it's life changing. I will say, you know, every time I take a ride, I do try to sit in a different seat because we are a four passenger.
[00:05:28] So two people face each other. So there are times where you can face forward while driving or go backwards. And so I try to sit in different spaces just to get the full experience of all the things. Mm hmm.
[00:05:42] Claude: Yeah, kind of similar to that train where you can face the opposite direction that it's going. That's very, very cool. So a lot of employees, I'm sure, to take care of to make, you know, that big and that complex project come to life. So how do you think about your food program and how it drives sort of productivity and innovation, um, and the employee experience at Zoox?
[00:06:03] Marisa: Well, I think that our food team comes from all very diverse backgrounds, and so we take pride in offering very advanced culinary experience to our workplace and our employees. So we try to offer premium dining experiences for our employees to enjoy. Fresh and customized menus daily.
[00:06:25] Claude: That's awesome. And you got some really talented, you know, chefs on the team. Can you talk about them a little bit?
[00:06:30] Marisa: We do, we've got a couple of different chefs. They all come from very different backgrounds. Uh, some come from tech, some come from Michelin stars. And I think what happens is they all come together and they kind of collaborate on all their different backgrounds and they bring it to Zoox.
[00:06:46] Claude: We haven't gone into sort of your background and sort of what you did before, but this is something you've seen at different companies and sort of how each company sort of has a different culture around, just culture in general, but definitely culture around food. You know, how do you think that, you know, food, you know, applies to culture and applies to sort of the team and how is it all sort of fit together when you're sort of in your role or the culinary program is sort of deciding what they want to do to support the company and the culture?
[00:07:15] Marisa: Well, the, I think the good thing about our food team is we all come from very diverse backgrounds, whether we've worked in tech or restaurants or Michelin star restaurants. So we try to create an experience with all of our past experiences and put 'em together and bring it to life to the employees. I think the thing that's important is every tech company, every restaurant has a different culture and so, what is happening at the bigger tech companies? We probably wouldn't do that here. So we like to take all of our background experiences and kind of figure out what works for the Zoox culture. It's kind of like read the room.
[00:07:50] And I think so far we're doing a good job at that.
[00:07:53] Claude: You guys have a big focus on sort of healthy snacks. Can you kind of go into that a little bit more? Mm
[00:08:00] Marisa: So we, uh, pride ourselves on sourcing, like I said, local, um, healthy. Ingredients for, that's in the cafe and in our micro kitchens. It's kind of like you are what you eat, right? So the healthier you eat, the more productive you are in a day. So we tend to stay along the lines of just healthier options, things that fuel the soul and will help employees not crash, but be more productive in their daily life, day to day.
[00:08:27] So,
[00:08:29] Claude: What's, what's sort of the, the most popular, snacks in the micro kitchen?
[00:08:34] Marisa: the most popular beverage is, uh, yerba mate. It's like gold around here. So, we have a big following here, and that will never leave Zoox. It's a forever staple. And then, you know, I would say protein shakes are next. Uh, peanut butter pretzels are Favorite here and then, you know, mix nuts and then I do a quarterly refresh. So I'm constantly trying to expose new products, obviously live within the range of dietary restrictions. So there'll always be something gluten free or vegan or dairy free to kind of give exposure to the snacks, but also to kind of educate our employees of there's a lot of healthy, fun snacks out there for you to try.
[00:09:20] Claude: Those peanut butter pretzels may not fall high on the healthy list, but they are dangerous. I have to stay away from them. Yeah, I just have to stay away from them. Um, but
[00:09:30] Marisa: very good.
[00:09:30] Claude: that's a personal shortcoming. Um, when you think about what, and this is where I'm going to take, take notes.
[00:09:35] When you think about like sourcing and doing those refreshes, like how do you decide like which brands to work with? Which products to bring in?
[00:09:43] Marisa: So I think this comes from my event background, but I'm very like hands on and I know some companies, they just kind of trust their vendors to do whatever. But for me, I, you know, I work closely with my vendors and, you know, challenge them with finding trendy, fun snacks. I also like to go to different trade shows and meet different vendors, you know, kind of like touch, feel, read the ingredients on every product, but also it's like building relationships too.
[00:10:12] So I would say working close with my vendors. Going to trade shows, and then, there's a couple other things I do, which is, we do a Zoox market here. Uh had a couple of them so far, and sometimes we'll bring in different companies to come in and, Basically showcase their products. If they're in our micro kitchens already, we will bring them out so they can talk to our employees and educate them about their products.
[00:10:40] Coffee is a big hit around here. So I will bring in coffee vendors like twice a year to come in and that way they can talk about their story. And then everybody knows about their coffee and how to make it and brew it. So it's kind of a, um, Win win for everyone.
[00:10:56] Claude: Do you guys look at like how much of your spend is going towards sort of diverse brands and sort of the markets?
[00:11:03] Marisa: Yeah, absolutely. So both of my vendors know to always incorporate women owned, minority owned. I would say we're about 30 to 40 percent. Women owned, minority owned products in our micro kitchens, and we will always keep those in our micro kitchens.
[00:11:20] Claude: That's awesome. Do you guys do anything around like themes or different seasonality around the year?
[00:11:26] Marisa: So yes, we love themes. Because we are in the healthier side of things, sometimes we do do special treats and on Valentine's Day, Lesser Evil, you're probably familiar with the popcorn, Lesser Evil, I saw that he did a little Valentine's Day bag to and from, and so sourced them to come in and sprinkle the Valentine's Day snacks across the board, even to our remote sites, because to me, it's very important to get our remote sites involved in all the offerings we have.
[00:11:56] Obviously it's Pride Month, so today we just had a big Pride festival in our cafe and DJ, and that's very themed. But yes, we are very huge on themes here.
[00:12:07] Claude: You've kind of worked in restaurants and sort of multiple different tech companies that have food. Why is food so important to companies?
[00:12:14] Marisa: You know, I think food just brings people together. If you think about food, like when you're entertaining at home, everybody always migrates to the kitchen, right? Same thing here at work. I think food is an important. Obviously it's to nourish yourself, but it's also a good place to be. I think a lot of our employees here love to go down at lunch and collaborate and talk story around our tables.
[00:12:37] Our cafes are extremely busy from 12 o'clock on, you know, there's long lines and it's just because people love to come and surround themselves with the best people. Or, you know, treat themselves to the menu offerings. We have a very diverse menu. And so I think sometimes people just come and love to check out all of our food.
[00:12:58] Claude: A lot of companies are kind of going the opposite direction, right? They're like remote only. Like maybe you see your coworkers, you know, once a year. Why do you think companies, other companies have said, Hey, we're going to, we're going to focus on bringing people together and providing experiences for them to, you know, do on a daily basis.
[00:13:14] You know, a lot of times around food, sometimes just around the party, right? Why is that important? Why do companies in your experience think that that's important?
[00:13:23] Marisa: Well, I think it just, it, it engages employees, right? I think food is, is a perk. I think it's important to have at companies. I also think after, you know, COVID, things shifted. Some people, it was better to run certain companies in a remote environment and not have everybody come in for whatever reason. We like our people in house. We like them to come in. We like them to collaborate and we like them to be here. So we try to offer as many perks for them. So they want to come into work and it's exciting for them. It's a, it's a tough question because it's, it's very different from company to company on how they view food. I mean, I've been in food my whole life, so I think it's important. Some people, some companies just don't think it's important. They would rather save their money to do other things. We try to do all the things. We try to host great events, offer great, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner offerings, micro kitchen offerings, and then we also have a little small catering program as well.
[00:14:21] Claude: So you're talking to people who like really care about the food programs. Like, do you do surveys or other ways to sort of gauge like the level of, you know, happiness around those programs or ways to improve the program?
[00:14:33] Marisa: So currently we don't do any surveys with the food program, but we do have an internal email that we encourage people. We love feedback. Feedback is a gift for us. So if people want to email us, We highly encourage them to give us their suggestions, comments, concerns. We also have the fun Slack channels of the world.
[00:14:55] And so those are very fun and exciting. Like today it's blowing up because everybody is showing all the pride, pride event, the food was great. So we typically get our feedback from that and then we keep a report of everything and it usually determines like our offering. So for example, my micro kitchens, I was told that I had too many coconut offerings, so I was like, I do inside the look and it was just two coconut offerings, but somebody is highly allergic to coconut.
[00:15:24] So I have to be mindful of that. And so, next refresh, I'll just put something more lemony, so we won't do coconut. So we just try to take in everybody's feedback, you know, and people will post on Slack, like this is the best, pasta we've ever had.
[00:15:40] Then the chefs will take notes of it and then they will recreate it in a different way.
[00:15:43] Claude: What's the most kind of ridiculous request you've had? Uh,
[00:15:48] Marisa: Oh, geez. Um, I mean, I don't even know. I feel like that I'm, I'm on the spot there. I may have to We, we get a lot of them, you know, it's, it's kind of like you put in a salad bar and then people were like, Oh, we don't want a salad bar.
[00:16:04] We want this. And it's like, well, you need to have everybody's, you know, taste, but it's like when you do something nice. Then it's like, it's never good enough, right? So, we get a lot of that.
[00:16:17] Claude: I don't know, six, seven years ago or something, we had a request for vegan beef jerky. And it sounded like, I was like, that seems made up, that, that doesn't, that doesn't exist. Vegan and beef right next to each other don't seem to make a ton of sense, but sure enough, there's a, there's a company out there that makes it.
[00:16:34] And so we brought it in. We've had other ones, but that's one that's, You know, it seems outlandish, but we're actually able to do so. You definitely get some interesting, creative things that people are looking
[00:16:46] Marisa: the outlandish. there's vegan or there's mushroom jerky. I think that's the new thing now. Right. I, you know, kind of gauge interests with the snacks I choose is when I go to these snack fairs or I get all these samples, I have this like, Basket at my desk and I have the team come over and sample them.
[00:17:02] And so sometimes I'm like gung ho about a mushroom jerky or a gluten free lemon bar that I think is really awesome. And everyone's like, Marisa, this is disgusting. And I'm like, no, it's actually really good. So I am the one to like all the kind of interesting things, but it's kind of good that we'll take a poll around the team and, it's like, who likes this, who doesn't. And then that will kind of steer me in the direction of, okay, I guess maybe I am a little off because I like mushroom jerky, so we will never probably put mushroom jerky in my crew kitchens.
[00:17:34] Claude: You have like a snack tasting panel? Like, you know, a group of like 10 people you bring together when you look at what snacks to bring in?
[00:17:41] Marisa: No, but what I do do
[00:17:44] Claude: more informal.
[00:17:45] Marisa: we, I, I sit on the place. Yeah, I just leave it there for people to taste cause everybody's different. And then sometimes it's too many chiefs and then you get all their requests. How come you did this? Why don't you bring this back? And next, you know, I'm just like writing a list for everybody's requests.
[00:17:58] I'll take some samples and sprinkle them around to some other teams in the office and just share it with them and see if they like them. And they'll give me a thumbs up. And it's just nice to get different people's perspective on snacks.
[00:18:11] Claude: I was going to say that panel probably
[00:18:12] Marisa: I'm sure one
[00:18:13] Claude: to join.
[00:18:16] Marisa: Yeah.
[00:18:16] So the vendors will come and they'll bring me a bunch of samples and I will look at all of them and you know there's ingredients and things I have to, guidelines I have to follow and then we'll kind of narrow them down and then I'll either take them back to some people and it just depends on the day because you know everybody's so busy so I will either sprinkle them around to some other teams or leave them at my desk to get some of the culinary team's feedback on them.
[00:18:41] Claude: And we've been talking about some of the ad hoc things you do, but I know you do a lot of things very, very intentionally around creating those employee experiences. Can you kind of walk through kind of how you think about maybe like a calendar year or, you know, sort of what, you know, unit of frame do you use to sort of create those experiences and sort of the, the tempo of how often do you want to have a party?
[00:19:01] Like how often do you want to do menus and refresh micro markets?
[00:19:07] Marisa: currently what I do is I do quarterly refreshes. I started those right when I came on, just to keep things interesting and innovative for our employees. The other thing we've incorporated are the Zoox market. We will probably do those twice a year. And those will probably grow in different ways.
[00:19:23] the other new thing that I'm doing this year is, um, a snack fair. So this kind of goes back to your question of, you know, survey and how do I pick a certain snack. So we'll do a snack fair where the employees will bring in probably 10 plus vendors and the employees will get to vote. You know, be a QR code and they can share which ones were their favorite. And then we'll take the data and we'll put those in our micro kitchens, probably in Q4.
[00:19:52] Claude: That's very cool. how do you like, you know, find these like innovative brands and sort of innovative products that you want to sort of bring in that just aren't the, you know, the, the normal stuff that everybody sees on the shelf at the, at their local grocery store?
[00:20:05] Marisa: Yeah, for me, it's trade show. So that's, I try to get to two of them a year. What I've learned is there's a lot of East coast products that don't make their way over here. And so I'm always trying to help the smaller businesses.
[00:20:19] So for me, it's just getting out there and seeing where all these snacks are from, because sometimes, you know, the vendors just have the same old snacks and I just like to take it one step further. And I'm like, no, I know there's something better out there. I know we can define something. So. The new one for me is like prickly pear. Have you heard of him?
[00:20:38] Claude: Uh,
[00:20:39] Marisa: cactus water.
[00:20:40] Claude: Yeah. I know the, I know the flavor compound, but not the, uh,
[00:20:44] Marisa: It's cactus water. They're from Arizona and they're, you know, made their way through California, but just a great story. These two guys out of college created it. So for me, that's, I just have to get out there and see them. Cause again, I'm, I'm just not the shopper online. I have to physically see it and feel it and get the full experience.
[00:21:04] So that's the, the main thing I do is source through my vendors or the trade shows. Uh,
[00:21:12] Claude: like Expo West, uh, is probably one that you'd like to go to. What's the other one? Is it fancy
[00:21:18] Marisa: UNFI. I went to UNIFI in San Diego and Vegas. And then I just came back from the Chicago National Restaurant Association. That was pretty big. It's more geared towards the cafe world, but there's still so much innovation there. There was robots there serving food and snacks and champagne.
[00:21:36] And all I could do is look at it and I went with, we, we all, the food team went together as a team and we all just looked at each other, like, how can we bring this, like, what can we do to bring these robots just to like have them deliver like a birthday snack to somebody? Like it just, our brains just started going just cause we're in that industry. But we're like, okay, we have throttle back. That's it. We'll just add it to our notes and we will keep this in our pocket.
[00:22:02] Claude: I mean, a champagne serving autonomous vehicle sounds pretty good to me.
[00:22:08] Marisa: mean, there's that too,
[00:22:09] Claude: need to take a tour up to wine country. Like, there you go. I'm just saying, just saying. Not that I would use it. I would definitely use it. really like working with like small, small brands as well. I think it's, it's really fun to see like their product also evolve over times from, you know, you get the invoice number and it's a very, very low number.
[00:22:30] And then a couple of years later you see how much their business has grown and being able to get that
[00:22:34] Marisa: Mm hmm.
[00:22:36] Claude: Um, do you have outside those brands, do you have any like one client that you're like, I had them when they were, you know, very, very small company and now they've, they've grown and you have done great things.
[00:22:46] Marisa: I would say Wild Wonder. She was, when I came in, Wild Wonder was a hit here, and she, we had her in, I think, for a good couple years, and we went through all of her flavors. At one time, we just carried, we carried all three, and then, you know, we kind of went down to the most popular two, and then we went down to one, and then, Mm hmm.
[00:23:06] You know, I just felt like, okay, she's on the map now. You're seeing her everywhere. You're seeing her grocery store. She's popping up on LinkedIn. She's, she's thriving. So I was like, okay, we can slowly replace her and put somebody else in, you know, who needs exposure. But I would say she's the one that stands out the most to me while being here in Zoox.
[00:23:26] Claude: That's awesome. so I like to talk a lot about trends. People have an idea of like, you know, how things are changing. What changes are you seeing from, the food world and tech maybe like 10 years ago to today?
[00:23:39] Marisa: Healthier options. It's, it's, it's happening across the board. I mean, I think, yeah, the bigger tech companies do the sugars and sodas, but I think they're slowly pulling away from that because I think people are asking for more healthy options. So I think we're in front of that already. we try not to deprive our people of snacks and sugar.
[00:23:59] We do offer a Friday treat at three o'clock on Fridays to get people excited about this, dessert that they're going to get on Friday, or, do a pop up where there's some sugar, but I just think the trend right now is just healthier options. Like everything that our vendors are bringing to us, they're just unique.
[00:24:15] Everybody's starting to, you know, like the gluten free cookies, I think two years ago, they were just not very good. And I think people are nailing them now. They're really good. There's a lot of gluten free products out there that are delicious. And some people just don't know it. I would say healthier options because even when I talk to my friends who work in other tech companies, they are like the way of the world is we got to start bringing in these healthier options because the Reese's and the Kit Kats aren't going off the shelves anymore.
[00:24:45] Claude: Yeah, that, that, that's definitely a trend we're, we're seeing as well. And I think it's great because there's so many new brands that have really focused on being, being healthy and, the probiotic soda wars that are trying to replace the, you know, the big, you know, Cokes and Pepsis, right.
[00:25:02] Healthier sort of still fits in that sort of category and sort of like drinking experience, right?
[00:25:09] Marisa: Mm hmm.
[00:25:10] Claude: something that's sort of slightly sweet. That's going to fill, like when I would drink a soda and now you have something that's healthy that fills that gap.
[00:25:18] Claude: if you look at their sales numbers, it seems like a lot of other people agree with,
[00:25:22] Marisa: Yeah, and their flavors are good,
[00:25:24] Claude: yeah. They're,
[00:25:25] Marisa: So sometimes when you see, like, cherry soda, you're like, what? Cherry soda prebiotic drink? And then you taste it, you're like, this is actually cherry soda. Or, like, the grape. Like, great, reminds me of being a kid again. So they're doing really well with the flavor profiles, I think.
[00:25:42] Claude: I agree with you. We've talked a lot about how, you know, food creates culture. Like what are some of the ways you use your employees to help determine like what experiences you want to deliver with your food programs?
[00:25:54] Marisa: so we work really close with our affinity groups. They have multiple theme events throughout the year. And so like I mentioned, we just did Pride Month breakfast today with them and we had this great party event inside of our cafe. They will request if we can do a big Diwali menu or a Cinco de Mayo menu. And so we will put those together and sprinkle those different cultures throughout our cafe experiences across all remote sites.
[00:26:22] Claude: That's very cool. And like, you know, what, is there any like foodie RG where it's just really food people?
[00:26:29] Marisa: You mean like do we have a foodies team,
[00:26:30] Claude: yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:32] Marisa: Well, we do, um, we do have a special Slack channel for people who, you know, cook from home or appreciate what they do. And so they will post. And so that tends to be a very popular Slack channel where people will talk about the food or they'll compliment the chefs on what they've cooked.
[00:26:51] We have several Slack channels and they're all very different for different reasons. But, you know, if we, we do a nice menu here and Bayside, the Bayside meals will. There'll be a lot of compliments on that or cooking from home. People will say, Hey, I perfected, you know, one of the chef's menus at home. And so that I would say is like our foodie network.
[00:27:14] Claude: Do your chefs ever participate in the channels to be like, here's how you butter, uh,
[00:27:19] Marisa: Um, well,
[00:27:20] Claude: eye?
[00:27:20] Marisa: what they will do is they will send emails, you know, how did you make this clam chowder? Or this was the best, you know, dressing. And so what we'll do is we'll, they'll ask for the recipe and we will give it to them.
[00:27:34] Claude: That's awesome. Yeah. I imagine that's a, you know, for me, that would be a great perk. Like, what's chef think I should do when I'm making this? Or how did they do this? And then you can kind of incorporate it in what you do. And I think that's one of the, one of the values of learning from other people and being around people
[00:27:48] Marisa: Mm hmm.
[00:27:48] Claude: learn, you know, stuff you didn't know, and you didn't even really know how to ask.
[00:27:52] Marisa: They welcome, they welcome the engagement with the employees. They like to talk to them. They like to give them special treatment, and they love all the feedback. And so if somebody challenges them to do something, they will do it.
[00:28:04] Claude: that's, that's great. That has got to be a lot of fun. I imagine some people probably abuse that a little bit. They're like, Hmm, make this for me. Yeah,
[00:28:14] Marisa: yes, I'm sure it's
[00:28:15] Claude: maybe you haven't heard about it. But I want to thank you so much, uh, for joining us today, Marissa, and sharing your experience, across Zoox in particular, about how you use food to create great employee experiences.
[00:28:30] If people wanted to follow up with you or connect with you, what's the best way to do that?
[00:28:34] Marisa: People can follow me on LinkedIn. And if anybody wants to know more about Zoox, we are all on every platform,
[00:28:41] Claude: That's
[00:28:42] Marisa: you know, the Instagrams and BlinkedIn,
[00:28:45] Claude: the Instagrams, the LinkedIn's, the, the websites,
[00:28:49] Marisa: Twitters, all of the above.
[00:28:51] Claude: X's or whatever it is now. But really appreciate your time today. And, uh, I will probably take you up on coming to see one of those cafes.
[00:28:58] Marisa: yeah, thank you. It's been a pleasure. And, uh, maybe we can, um, one day do a sequel of what it tastes like. What does coffee and tea taste like in a robot taxi, because we'd love to have you come for a ride.
[00:29:19] You for joining Marissa and I today on Office Libations Unwrapped. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for future episodes filled with inspiration, ideas, and strategies to optimize your workplace culture. And remember, happy employees make happy customers. Until next time, I'm your host, Claude Burns.