Every weekday starting around noon, about 400 employees at the Beta Technologies manufacturing facility in South Burlington migrate from their desks and the production floor lined with glossy white electric airplanes to an airy, plant-filled cafeteria. Long, communal tables fill with clusters of colleagues chatting over the free daily meal offered to workers at the fast-growing company, which raised more than $1 billion when it went public in November.
On a mid-December Thursday, kitchen team members piled plates with Jericho Settlers Farm greens tossed with potatoes, winter squash, turnips, radishes, green beans and marinated tomatoes in a maple-white balsamic vinaigrette. The generous mound of veggies is known in Beta lingo as a SOUS, for “salad of unusual size,” a play on the much less appetizing “rodent of unusual size” from The Princess Bride. SOUS is the cafeteria’s usual Thursday offering, served with a protein. That day, employees could choose chicken thighs in a mustardy barbecue sauce or Vermont Soy tofu roasted with sweet chile.
Unlike buffet-style workplace cafeterias, Beta offers a single daily meal, with a vegan option if the dish contains animal products. All the food is prepared in a central kitchen in South Burlington and served at seven Beta sites in South Burlington and Williston. The weekly routine includes pasta Mondays, soup or chili on Wednesdays, and Friday pizza made with a 128-year-old sourdough starter — all served with salad.
Despite the focused menu, corporate chef Tim Peters and his team of six happily accommodate several dozen special dietary requests each day, from preferences to sensitivities to life-threatening allergies to disease-related conditions. The lunch program’s charter is “to feed everyone well — healthy, fresh, no refined sugars — and as local as possible,” Peters, 51, said. “We’re a full-service restaurant that doesn’t charge. We are here to support everyone.”
For an average plate cost of $5.45, Peters sources from many Vermont farms and food producers, even buying some meat and other homegrown ingredients raised by employees. “We repurpose what we can to keep the cost down and really do our best not to have any waste,” Peters said.
On December 18, Beta network engineer Nicholas Pecora beamed in anticipation of tucking into his salad and roasted tofu. Pecora said he eats vegan for health reasons and is grateful that the kitchen is willing to accommodate his dietary choice. The food “is better than I can make,” he said, “and I pride myself on being a good cook.”
Behind the serving line, more than half a dozen special salads sat, carefully sequestered, on a stainless table. Peters, who joined Beta in April 2021 after a five-year stint as executive chef at Burlington’s Trattoria Delia, explained that each plate had been composed for a specific employee with a dietary restriction, ranging from a pea protein allergy to celiac disease.
Among the average 650 or so daily lunch patrons, “there are about eight people we could put into anaphylaxis, which is slightly terrifying,” Peters said. Even in the case of that kind of risk, the kitchen staff is committed to doing whatever it can to adapt lunch so that everyone feels comfortable taking advantage of the benefit.
We serve one meal 40 different ways.
Tim Peters
“We serve one meal 40 different ways,” Peters said, without a hint of annoyance.
Since its initial public offering, Beta has ramped up hiring and now employs around 1,000 people across several states and Québec. The chef meets every new hire and takes every dietary restriction very seriously. When employees introduce themselves, Peters said he cautions them, “I’m probably not gonna remember your name unless you have an allergy.”
To keep the adaptation lists in check, the Beta kitchen eschews nuts completely, and the chef has reluctantly given up Worcestershire sauce, one of his favorite seasonings, because it contains anchovies and there are too many finfish allergies.
“I read every ingredient list on everything and pop-quiz these guys all the time,” Peters said, nodding toward his team members. He emphasizes the importance of paying close attention through dark humor. An incorrect answer might elicit: “Congrats, you’ve just killed three people.”
All that effort shows, said Jennifer Brine, program manager of Beta’s test team. Brine was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2012 and has severe reactions to even the slightest gluten cross-contamination. When she was hired a year and a half ago, she knew the company offered free lunch but doubted she could risk eating it. But when she approached Peters, his response was encouraging. “He was like, ‘Oh, I remember everybody’s face and everybody’s allergy right away,’” Brine recalled.
Brine’s job requires her to work at various Beta sites in Vermont, and each has an established procedure to ensure that her meal is prepared with as little chance of cross-contamination as possible. “It’s a huge burden removed,” Brine said, noting that because she’s so focused on her job, worrying about what to eat each day would be stressful. “If we didn’t have lunch, I could see many days of the week not eating lunch.”
The program manager said the Beta lunch program has also helped her eat healthier. “I don’t actually like salad that much,” she admitted. The first day she saw on the #beta_eats Slack channel that lunch was salad, “I was like, Oh, man,” she recalled. “And then I got the salad, and it’s so delicious. I love it.” She knew she should eat more greens, Brine said, “but I don’t know if that’s a choice I would have made on my own.”
Not every employee has been similarly converted, but, based on demand, most seem very satisfied with their free, healthy lunch — customized to their dietary needs upon request. A few still brown-bag it from home, and “some people prefer to go to Al’s,” Peters said, referring to South Burlington fast-food favorite Al’s French Frys. Whatever Beta employees choose to eat or to avoid, he said, “I’m not here to judge.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Cleared for Lunch | At South Burlington’s Beta Technologies, the kitchen team happily accommodates a range of dietary needs”
This article appears in The Wellness Issue 2026.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!