An army marches on its stomach. Food boosts morale, energizes the mind, and rewards your team. Food is more magical than money. I am convinced through my experience that feeding your team is one of the keys to success. I calculate catering and craft service into my film budgets before any other line item. Not only is your team happier on a full stomach, they tend to stick around the office and get more work done. The traditional hour lunch break sends everyone off into the world and away from each other, making it difficult to get back into the gear of tasks at hand.

Afraid that feeding your team may be too expensive? Think instead about the productivity costs associated with sending your team outside for an hour lunch break. It will take an individual between 10 and 20 minutes to reach a destination for lunch, between 20 and 35 to eat, 10 to 20 to return, and as much as 30 minutes to get motivated again. On average, the hour lunch break could cost you as much as one and a half man-hours per employee per day. For a ten-person team with $60,000 salaries each, that’s $430 a day – over $2,000 per week! You could more than cover the costs of a caterer for the same price.

Find a way to pay for it. Feeding your team may be an added expense unaccounted for in your overhead and payroll costs, but the work output benefits are tenfold. Yum.