The conference room is stale. The restaurant meeting venue keeps us from sharing what’s really on our mind. Meeting up at the cubicle space is…well, just lame. Where you meet is just as important as what you’re meeting about. Space can inspire creativity and candid talks. So, why have we gotten it all wrong?
I may be crazy, but I believe more business needs to done in the kitchen, around the goodness of food. If you can cook with someone, you can do business with them.
In various Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures, meeting with others is all about the food. Heaps of it. And not just your 45-minute power lunch either. I’m talking courses, buckets of wine, and hours of pure togetherness. I’m not saying that every meeting needs to be a Thanksgiving extravaganza, but there is something to food. Cooking it together. Tasting it, experimenting with it, learning about it together, working together with it. I may be biased because I love food, but isn’t working on homemade pasta together, talking about business and life, better than sitting around the conference room’s behemoth, awkward table? Let’s not forget that families are the ones that cook together.
I get it; some may think food and meetings is just a gimmick. But, if a company can authentically pull off the cooking meet up, wouldn’t you like them better? Think they’re more fun and creative? Feel that they care about you more?
So, what if the kitchen became more of a meeting destination? What if there were kitchens instead of corporate cafeterias? What if clients and prospects sat on the other side of your kitchen island on bar stools while you made homemade soup for them? What if your company had an afternoon tea time where mentors and mentees paired up to share a spot of tea and bake some biscuits? What if your company hosted cooking classes as part of its corporate training program? What if staff meetings were held around communal tables? Better yet, what if they were held around your community garden? What if Joe was simply making some of his banana bread, and the aroma invited others to a much-needed break to joke around and get reenergized?
I wish companies would make kitchens their central nervous system. I think it would help us decompress, get inspired, and do better business.