Office landlords have gotten creative with the wide variety of amenities they’ve dangled in front of tenants in recent months to lure companies back into buildings.
Vornado Realty Trust’s latest perk for tenants at the landlord’s 33 Manhattan office properties includes free, contactless delivery by food ordering platform Sharebite, the Commercial Observer.
There is no financial deal in place for the two companies, according to the Observer. Instead, Vornado sees the partnership — which offers deliveries from restaurants like Sweetgreen and Cava — as another tool to bring tenants back, while Sharebite told the outlet also serves an opportunity to expand its consumer base.
“As employees come back to the office they want amenities — food is just one of them,” said Mohsin Memon, president, COO and co-founder of Sharebite. “We found that almost 80 percent of our clients right now are actually paying for some kind of portion of food because it’s an employee market these days and it’s such an important benefit to offer.”
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Vornado gave Sharebite an initial shot at its headquarters in spring 2021, before it decided to expand the service based on its popularity.
In addition to pandemic-era upgrades like ventilation systems, large elevators to accommodate social distancing and Zoom-friendly conference rooms, developers have widely embraced pricey perks to make their properties eclipse the appeal of remote work.
Trophy office property One Vanderbilt has high-end air filtration systems, a 4,000-square-foot terrace and a cafe with celebrity chef Daniel Boulud in charge.
While it’s hard to definitively track whether or not those perks are pulling tenants back to the space, SL Green CEO Marc Holliday said in October the building is more than 90 percent leased.
Amid new coronavirus variants and unclear return to work plans, players in Manhattan’s office market will likely take advantage of anything they can to recover.
November was a decent month for the market, as office tenants signed more than 3 million square feet of leases for the first time since January 2020, according to Colliers’ monthly market snapshot. But the availability rate in the market was still 16.9 percent, 3.4 percentage points higher than the previous year.
[CO] — Holden Walter-Warner