Absurdity of this proposal aside, most food service workers in these cafeterias are contractors who are not paid well and receive shitty, if any, benefits.
How does working at a cafeteria provider like Bon Appetit compare to working at a restaurant? By that I mean a place where office workers are likely to get lunch daily, where the typical lunch costs <$10.
Also consider that workplace cafeteria jobs generally have fixed schedules with weekends off.
Never worked at a mass catering company like Compass Group myself, but I know people who have. They are terrible places to work compared to a restaurant.
The smaller catering companies, with <30 employees aren't usually too different from a restaurant, but the big ones are run by corporate bean counters, where everything and everyone is just a number in a spreadsheet.
I guess it's no different from your local mom & pop Italian restaurant vs Olive Garden in that respect though.
Absurdity of this proposal aside, most food service workers in these cafeterias are contractors who are not paid well and receive shitty, if any, benefits.