Sponsored by Fresh Market by Premier
At a 24/7 workplace, lunch does not always happen at noon. Employees may have a short break, controlled-access gates to navigate and few practical food options nearby. At manufacturing facilities, industrial sites, offices, and other large workplaces, something as basic as getting a meal can quickly become an operational issue.
Employers face the other side of that problem. They want to keep teams close to the job, support multiple shifts and overtime, reduce unnecessary vehicle traffic, and provide quality food without creating another operation for management to run.
Fresh Market by Premier was built around that need.
Top Executive: Grady Verret, CEO, Premier Food Group
Phone: 985.446.0075
Address: 1600 Ridgefield Road, Thibodaux LA 70301
Website: Fresh Market by Premier
The Thibodaux-based company provides workplace meal solutions for commercial and industrial environments. Its flagship Fresh Market program places chef-prepared meals, snacks and beverages directly inside the workplace, using self-service technology that can operate 24 hours a day without a permanently staffed point of sale.
Fresh Market is only one part of the model. Depending on the facility, Premier can support full-service cafeterias, permanent or secondary Fresh Markets, pantry and coffee programs, catering, overtime meal programs, temporary markets and hybrid foodservice plans combining several services under one provider.
“Every facility is different,” says Premier Companies Strategic Growth Director Emily Rini. “The workforce, hours, available space and service needs all play a role in determining what the right foodservice program looks like.”
Fresh food is still the reason the program works. Fresh Market locations can include chef-prepared entrees, salads, sandwiches, and other meal options, along with a full selection of snacks, healthier choices, beverages, and convenience products.
What customers see is the market. Behind it is a larger production, delivery, and field-service operation. Meals move through a managed cold chain and are transported in refrigerated vehicles. Market technology provides sales and inventory information, while field operators adjust product mix and service frequency based on actual usage.
Some facilities need one market. Others need several. A large workplace campus may require multiple service points, while a location with an existing cafeteria may need 24/7 meal access after the cafeteria closes. Other customers may need overtime meals, catering, pantry service, or a combination of programs.
Turnarounds, maintenance shutdowns, and major construction projects create a different challenge altogether. A facility’s population can increase dramatically for weeks or months, putting pressure on foodservice programs designed for the normal workforce.
For those projects, Premier deploys 53-foot climate-controlled mobile Fresh Market trailers that can be placed on-site, scaled as workforce activity increases, and removed when the project ends.
A 2026 maintenance shutdown in Plaquemine put that flexibility to the test. Over 52 active days, a temporary Fresh Market handled 29,924 transactions and sold 70,258 items. Daily volume averaged 575 transactions and reached a peak of 908 in a single day.
As activity increased, Premier raised service frequency to five or six visits per week and adjusted inventory using transaction data and field feedback. As the workforce decreased, service and inventory were adjusted with it. The temporary market changed along with the demands of the project rather than requiring the facility to build a permanent solution for a temporary need.
The idea behind Fresh Market can be traced to another large workforce event. While feeding cleanup crews following the 2010 BP oil spill, Premier saw firsthand the need for quality meals that workers could access quickly and take back into the field. That experience helped shape a workplace food program around employees who could not simply leave the jobsite for a traditional meal.
Premier already had decades of restaurant, catering and foodservice experience. Fresh Market applied that culinary and operating experience
to a different setting: the workplace. The first Fresh Market opened in 2019 at Fletcher Technical Community College, and the program expanded into manufacturing and petrochemical facilities the following year.
Since then, the platform has consistently grown. Fresh Market by Premier will have more than 50 locations this year, along with an expanding number of permanent and temporary foodservice programs.
“Every new location teaches us something,” Rini says. “The needs aren’t the same from one workplace to another, and that’s helped us continue to improve the program as we’ve grown.”
The needs vary by customer, but the objective is consistent: give employees dependable access to quality food where they work. Whether a customer needs a staffed cafeteria, a 24/7 Fresh Market, multiple markets across a large campus, a mobile market supporting a shutdown or a combination of services, Premier can tailor the foodservice program to the facility and its workforce.
