Food Companies Promote Healthy Eating for Tax Season

Tax preparers frequently skip meals or turn to junk food during the hectic tax season, and some companies want to make sure they make healthier nutrition choices.

Crunchies, a company that sells freeze-dried fruit and veggie snacks, launched an online promotion last week aimed at accountants and tax professionals. The promotional campaign, known as “Crunching The Numbers,” began on March 15 and concludes April 30. The company is inviting accountants and tax consultants to email or post a note of 50 words or less explaining why crunching the numbers is especially stressful this time of year and why they often turn to fattening snacks to help them get through the long hours and even longer tax forms. To participate in the campaign, send an email to info@crunchiesfood.com or connect with the company via Facebook or Twitter.

The first 100 CPAs and tax consultants who send in emails with a shipping address, along with easily verifiable proof that they’re in the financial planning industry, will be able to win free snacks from Crunchies, and qualify for a Grand Prize Gift Basket, which will include Crunchies snack products along with promotional items such as shirts, hats, water bottles and more.

Crunchies is also inviting U.S. taxpayers to send in 50 words or less on why the stresses and long hours leading up to April 15 likewise prompt them to consume an especially large amount of fattening and unhealthy snacks. As with the offer for accountants and tax pros, the first 100 entries will win free Crunchies snacks and vie for a similar Grand Prize Gift Basket.

Accounting Firms Ordering Food Late in the Day
The food delivery company GrubHub has done some research into the eating habits of accountants during tax season.

Seamless Corporate Accounts, a GrubHub product, helps to feed more than 4,000 companies across the U.S. and the U.K. According to the company’s BrainFood Survey, 27 percent of respondents indicated that the length of time between meals has a major impact on their productivity. Forty percent of the employees surveyed admitted they sometimes skip lunch because of heavy workloads.

That appears to be especially true of accounting professionals during a busy tax season, with orders during the 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. hour nearly four and a half times higher in the first quarter of the year than in Q2 and Q3 as employees delay lunch to focus on their work, according to accounting-ordering data analyzed by GrubHub Seamless.

On average, Seamless Corporate Account orders have been two times higher in Q1 than Q2 over the past four years for accounting firms. The data also indicates an increase in the number of orders placed year over year, suggesting that as tax laws become more complex, accountants are working longer hours every year. 

During the 2013 filing season, there was a 3 percent increase in orders, perhaps the result of tax changes from the last-minute deal that extended many of the Bush-era tax cuts that had expired at the end of 2012 and delayed tax season last year. The uptick in orders has continued this year as well, with orders more than 17.5 times higher than normal.

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