It’s time to reclaim our lunch hour

What do we want? A lunch hour. When do we want it? Sometime between 12pm and 2pm would be great!

It seems that a “working lunch” has become something of a status. Not stepping outside the office, or using the whole hour has become a badge of honour. Yes, the debate about whether lunch breaks should be made mandatory has raged for years, but businesses are still reaping the benefits of an employees to desire to work harder than their colleagues.

A recent report suggests more than a third of UK workers are regularly skipping their daily breaks, meaning they work an extra seven and a quarter unpaid days per year. Based on the average UK wage (£26,670 before tax), that’s £771.55 in wages being lost to skipped lunches.

Not to mention the possible indications to our health. Staring at computer screens, staying sedentary for long hours, or putting ourselves under the constant stress of work without a break is taking a physical and mental toll. We might think we thrive under pressure but our bodies don’t think so and eventually, we will collapse.

However, there is another factor that should drive us out of the office – the local restaurants and cafes who rely on the lunchtime trade.

Much has been made about keeping staff onsite with a great canteen. You just have to look at Google and Facebook to see a ‘stay-put’ culture that is being created amongst their workforce.

But it is not just us that thinks this needs to change.

Bloomsberg’s founder and Chief Exec Michael Bloomsberg is saying no to an onsite canteen and telling his staff to “get out and enjoy the local economy”. He didn’t want to “suck businesses away from local traders such as sandwich bars and fitness clubs.”

But do we really have the time?

It may seem like a luxury but with the help of your smartphone, even the most time poor can grab some delicious food – and invest in the local economy, instead of their boss!

Order ahead technology means lunch is just the touch of a button away, and keeping everything hyper-local means everyone is a winner.

Downloading the Swoope app enables office workers to preorder their lunch from local venues, and once they receive the message to say it is ready to be collected, they can pop out, skip the lunch time queues, and not waste precious time.

So take the break you earned and reclaim your lunch hour with Swoope today!