By Kory Dillon, Executive Chef, LifeWorks Restaurant Group
There is a moment most people who run a kitchen never talk about, the moment when the guests stop coming in. No covers to turn, no orders to run, no rhythm to hold you upright. Just a kitchen, a team, and a question: what do we do now?
We hit that moment in 2020.
I had been in kitchens my whole working life, twenty-five years in Virginia, the last twelve in corporate dining. When COVID-19 shut down a full employee dining experience for a major financial services client, the immediate loss was obvious. The dining room went dark. But what stayed with us was the guests on the other side of it. These were guests who had eaten with us every day, who counted on us for a good meal, who suddenly had nowhere to turn. Schools were closed. Our team came together and started a conversation as we do, how do we continue to support our clients and guests? How do we still show up for them when the dining room is not an option?
We started writing on a whiteboard. Eight to ten concepts in a few hours. We tested snack boxes, raw ingredient kits, family-sized meals. The idea we kept coming back to was simple: a real dinner, ready the moment they got home. Nineteen dollars for two people to have a full dinner. This is where the program was born.
Building it From Scratch
Getting the program off the ground took longer than the idea did. As you may recall, supply chains were stretched everywhere that first year. For our client, sustainability is not optional. For us either. When finding the right packaging proved difficult, we did not settle. We spent a month or two in a pilot, launching to a select group of guests, gathering feedback, and refining before we opened it up more broadly.
From there we started delivering. Our catering team bagged the orders and loaded them into vans. We set up three pickup locations, including a partnership with a local florist, with refrigerated cases so guests who could not receive a delivery still had access. What started as fifty meals delivered a day on a quiet week grew to seventy in the second year. That simple idea became something guests looked forward to, a meal to bring home, share with their families, and enjoy around their own tables. It was introduced as Thyme Savor, a LifeWorks Restaurant Group program developed during COVID-19 to keep guests connected to the dining experience after the offices closed. It has since been renamed @Home as the program continues to grow and evolve.
The Details Matter
Designing food for a take-home program is a different discipline than cooking and serving on the line. When you are serving guests on-site, the food goes from kitchen to table in minutes. For the @Home program, every dish has to travel, reheat, and hold, and every variable from moisture to structure behaves differently than it does in a live service kitchen. Seasoning reads differently after thirty minutes in a bag. The details matter in a way that changes how you think about cooking entirely. I design every menu to go in an oven at 375 degrees and come out looking like someone cooked it tonight.
That same attention carries through to how every meal is packaged. Every @Home meal goes out with a tag on the outside of the bag: allergens, a photograph of the dish, and heating instructions specific to that meal. Each bag typically holds five to eight items. Every container inside carries a full nutrition label, calories, macros, ingredients, and portion size, produced through a dietitian-grade program. The goal is transparency as trust. A guest should know exactly what they are receiving and how to prepare it before they open anything.
From that foundation the program grew. I started with about twenty menus. I now have somewhere between 150 and 200 that I rotate across the year, creating roughly eighty new ones annually. Menus change each season, with two rotating weekly specials, because every guest should find something that feels made for them, including vegetarian and vegan options.
The holiday editions tell the clearest story of how far the @Home program has come. We introduced Thanksgiving and Christmas boxes because guests were asking for them, and what we put together became part of how they celebrated. A full holiday spread for eight to ten, including starters, entrée options, seasonal sides, and holiday desserts, the kind of table that brings people together, ready the moment they walk through the door. Last Thanksgiving we were closing in on 400 orders. This year we are dedicating a refrigerated vehicle to accommodate holiday inventory volume.
Still Running, Still Growing
What began as a response to COVID-19 has become a permanent part of how we serve our guests, reaching more than 7,000 over five years. Guests eat lunch with us and still take dinner home on Fridays through the @Home program. This amenity extends the relationship past the end of the workday.
I have been with this program since day one. I have watched it go from a whiteboard in an empty kitchen to something other locations are now running and asking how to replicate.
"What started as our answer to a specific crisis turned out to be something guests wanted regardless of the circumstances that created it."
A strong employee dining experience does not end when the dining room closes. It follows people home. That is the part that still surprises me.
--
Kory Dillon is Executive Chef at LifeWorks Restaurant Group, where he has led the culinary program for a major financial services client for over a decade. With twenty-five years in professional kitchens, he designs every program detail, from seasonal menus to packaging, with the same standard: it should feel like someone made it for you.
Sign Up for News Alerts
