One of the consistent patterns in workplace dining is that trends from the high street eventually find their way into offices. Street food is probably the clearest example. What started as an urban retail and leisure trend quickly became a major influence on workplace foodservice design, with food halls, rotating vendors and more informal dining concepts becoming commonplace across office developments.

For a while, it seemed logical to assume that app-based ordering and dark kitchens would follow the same path. The logic seemed compelling. Lower rents, smaller footprints, reduced front-of-house labour, app-based ordering and highly flexible production models appeared perfectly suited to changing consumer behaviour and the rapid growth of delivery platforms. At the same time, hybrid working patterns and fluctuating office attendance made traditional workplace catering models feel increasingly difficult to sustain efficiently.

For landlords, occupiers and operators alike, dark kitchens appeared to offer a more agile and scalable solution. Centralised production could support multiple offers, flex around unpredictable demand and reduce the amount of valuable workplace space dedicated to kitchens and service counters.

However, I think the workplace sector is now starting to see a significant shift. Many people now have a choice about where they work. Home and the office are both viable workplace options - and that means the office increasingly has to differentiate itself in order to attract people in. That changes the role of workplace dining completely.

People are unlikely to commute into an office simply for food, particularly if the experience feels no different from ordering through a delivery app at home. Increasingly, the office has to offer something more valuable - social interaction, engagement, energy and a sense of connection, especially for younger generations who often view the workplace as an important social environment as much as a place to work.

Over the past few years, workplace foodservice has quietly shifted from being a support function to becoming part of the workplace amenity itself. Food is now expected to help drive culture, collaboration, community and ultimately attendance. The best workplace environments increasingly use hospitality to create energy within buildings - not simply feed people at lunchtime. That creates a challenge for the pure dark kitchen model.

Whilst highly efficient operationally, delivery-only kitchens lack visibility, theatre and social interaction. They do not activate space. They do not create atmosphere. And in premium office environments particularly, they struggle to support the kind of hospitality-led workplace experience many occupiers and landlords are now seeking.

But that does not mean dark kitchens do not have a future in workplace dining. Quite the opposite. I believe they will become an increasingly important part of workplace food ecosystems - just largely invisible to the end user.

The future workplace dining model is likely to be hybrid: experiential front-end hospitality supported by highly efficient back-end production. Food halls, kiosks, barista bars and social dining environments will sit at the front, while flexible centralised production kitchens operate behind the scenes to support peak demand, click & collect, meeting hospitality, evening working and delivery across larger campuses or multi-tenant buildings. This approach helps solve many of the biggest challenges facing workplace dining today, from fluctuating occupancy and extreme midweek peaks through to labour efficiency pressures, rising fit-out costs, reduced back-of-house space and the need for more adaptable amenities.

In many ways, the workplace market is now moving toward a model already seen in airports, stadiums and modern food halls: centralised production supporting decentralised experiences.

The most successful workplace environments in the future will probably not be those with the biggest kitchens, or the most delivery infrastructure. They will be the ones that successfully combine operational efficiency with genuine hospitality and experiences that give people a reason to choose the office over home.

Dark kitchens may not define the future of workplace dining - but the operational thinking behind them almost certainly will.