Socket is one of a few businesses starting the healthy snacks trend.
Socket, a telecommunications company, begins a healthy trend in the breakroom
By Amelia Waters
Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 2:31 a.m.
Read more: Local, Community
With warmer temperatures people are trading in a bag of chips for a granola bar or putting down a soda for a juice. Fatty high calories snacks are adding inches to our waste line. That is why businesses are taking away the snack machines and making room for veggies and fruits to their employees live healthier, longer lives.
Socket, a telecommunications company in Columbia is trading out potato chips for veggies.
"It's really our effort to come up with a way to help our employees to make better choices or have better options in front of them," said Carson Coffman, Socket's vice president for marketing and sales.
Healthy options begin with a nutritionist to help employees make the right choices.
Employee Sheila Lynch has been on the program for more than five months and says she has tried several diets and nothing worked. She believes she just needed the extra help in eating right.
"I've always known how to eat right, but it's helpful to have the food here and to have the guidance, and how to count carbs, which is something pretty reasonable," stated Lynch.
The prices are reasonable as well, just a couple of coins pays for a juice or piece of fruit.
"It took us a long time to come up with a way to kind of circumvent the standard vending machine option, and we really couldn't find anybody that wanted to work with healthy delivery of snacks," said Coffman.
Starting out as a small idea. The socket program continues to grow as a health and wellness initiative, influencing employees to eat better and exercise more.
'We got a gym membership set up with a local gym. Employees are the number one thing we have, there are number on resource," remarked Coffman, "If you think about they spend one third of their lives in our building."
And now the time they spend will include small ways employees can extend their lives one step at time.
Coffman also believes that healthier options makes for happier employees resulting in better customer service.
