3 ms·

Google spends $72 Million on Food

26 points by breily 18y ago

mhartl 18y ago
The relevant statistic is not the aggregate they arrived at, but the per capita cost they started with. Even $30/day is incredibly cheap considering how much it boosts productivity. Not only do people stay at work longer if they can eat for free, but they don't have to worry about food and can just focus on getting things done. I had lunch at the Googleplex yesterday and thought, "All big companies should do this." Maybe small ones, too.
- gscott 18y ago
  I feel a bit awkward for asking but I keep on seeing posts by people who have eaten lunch at Google, but how do you do that... Do you have to know someone there, just walk in, go on a tour?
  - fallentimes 18y ago
    I think those are largely people who are 1) interviewees 2) contractors 3) vendors or 4) clients. Or you could be like Jessica Livingston and get invited to the Google Author Series.
  - kirubakaran 18y ago
    mhartl is YC SFP'08 applicant. May be he is working out a deal with Google ;)
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      Maybe. Or maybe he just knows people at Google. Many Googlers leave to start startups...so there are many Xooglers among the ranks of YC startups.
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
    - mhartl 18y ago
      Close. I'm a WFP'08 founder.
      - kirubakaran 18y ago
        Thats right, you said you are launching in a week, not getting selected in a week. My bad.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    If you live in the valley, you probably know someone that works at Google. Most Googlers are pretty loose with invites to come for lunch or dinner. In fact, I've heard that Google actually serves nearly a 1:1 ratio of Googlers to non-Googlers every day at dinner (lunch is far more Googler centric) as Googlers often bring family, friends, etc. And despite some gnashing of teeth among the money men at Google over this fact, Sergey has declared that even if Google were to fall on hard times, food would be the last benefit to go.
    - neilk 18y ago
      True. Googlers with kids / spouses tend to bring them in for dinner quite a bit. Which is a pretty fair compensation for the kind of hours Googlers work, IMO. Doing this regularly is officially frowned upon. In fact, you're supposed to register on an internal website if you're planning to bring any guest at all. It's the honor system, but there's technically a limit on the number of guests per month.
  - mhartl 18y ago
    I know someone there.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
SwellJoe 18y ago
I used to think spending outlandish sums on employees was a bit silly...until I actually did the math. A lot of people choose to work at Google over working at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Yahoo, etc. Let's face it, if you can get a job at Google, you can get a job at most of those other places. But, Google pays a lower salary than all of those places for the same position. The way they make Google a more attractive place to work is all of the other non-salary compensation and the general vibe. Even if they spend $30/day/employee on food (I was also shocked by the snack cost alone, which I've heard from folks inside Google...all those $3 juices and such add up fast), it's still not all that big of a deal compared to the thousands they don't spend on salary. Likewise for the dual monitors, Steelcase Leap chairs, and the ergonomics team that Google employs to keep their employees sitting and working comfortably for longer hours. All of this stuff probably comes close to making the cost per employee as high as Microsoft, Yahoo and Sun pay...and yet, Google still gets first pick of the best talent. And it's not because Google employees get to work on cooler stuff--they don't. A large percentage of Googlers work on really boring crap. Building tools to sell ads and scaling them out to a massive scale is probably not an exciting development job. Everybody at this point is probably wondering why MS, Yahoo, and Sun don't just start doing all of the stuff that Google does, and make their workplace as cool and attractive as Google. They can't, of course, because they'd have to lower salaries for everyone in order to open the budget for it (or lock everyone into their current salary for the next couple of years and eat the losses until inflation catches up). And, of course, that would lead to a mass exodus...because nobody will accept a pay cut. Say what you will about Google, but the whole food+massages+snacks+etc. thing is genius on a whole new scale from the recruiting and employee satisfaction perspective. And, since they make $1 million per employee (a number beaten only by Exxon and a few others) they can afford to spend a few grand each year shoveling food into their employees to keep them feeling fat and happy.
- procyon 18y ago
  Don't know if it really makes sense for companies like MSFT to follow these tactics. Microsoft has around 80,000 employees compare to 16K employees at google. Besides, I think, average age of Microsoft employees is higher than google employees. Free food is not as lucrative for a middle age family man as compare to a new grad. I heard from MSFT old timers that though Microsoft never had free food, they were quite lenient with food in their early days. However, you have a point, in my opinion google has able to attract best tallent. Not sure how much free food accounts for it.
neilk 18y ago
The statistic I heard was $20/day. And there have been cutbacks over the years -- one day they removed a lot of the more exotic snacks and replaced them with bigger bins of bulk cereals. Oh, the outrage on internal mailing lists that day! Google's cafes are so efficient so I wonder how much the labor really adds to the cost. You have chefs and line workers that could work in a high-end restaurant, so salaries are higher, but it's all set up for maximum throughput, so perhaps that makes it cheap. For example, at Yahoo's cafes, there's a lot of made-to-order stuff. You end up waiting up to 10 minutes sometimes, and there are lineups. Everything at Google is premade food done buffet style, or self-serve, like a sandwich bar. At Yahoo I have waited for a long time for someone else to make the sandwich, and sometimes that person doesn't speak English well enough for me to make her understand that no, I don't actually want meat in the sandwich. The Google taqueria is made-to-order, but that is run like an assembly line and you add your own condiments at the end. In the boldest move, Google does away with the checkout line too, which makes throughput incredibly fast. Finally, for whatever reason, Googlers are more conscientious about cleaning their plates before returning them to the cafe. Yahoo has the same sorts of prominently placed garbage cans, but nobody seems to use them. The only reason that getting food at Google might take you more than 3 minutes are a) lines -- a growing problem b) indecision because everything looks so great. Caveat: this is my experience circa 2005-6.

26 points by breily 18y ago

The relevant statistic is not the aggregate they arrived at, but the per capita cost they started with. Even $30/day is incredibly cheap considering how much it boosts productivity. Not only do people stay at work longer if they can eat for free, but they don't have to worry about food and can just focus on getting things done. I had lunch at the Googleplex yesterday and thought, "All big companies should do this." Maybe small ones, too.

gscott 18y ago
I feel a bit awkward for asking but I keep on seeing posts by people who have eaten lunch at Google, but how do you do that... Do you have to know someone there, just walk in, go on a tour?
- fallentimes 18y ago
  I think those are largely people who are 1) interviewees 2) contractors 3) vendors or 4) clients. Or you could be like Jessica Livingston and get invited to the Google Author Series.
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  mhartl is YC SFP'08 applicant. May be he is working out a deal with Google ;)
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe he just knows people at Google. Many Googlers leave to start startups...so there are many Xooglers among the ranks of YC startups.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - mhartl 18y ago
    Close. I'm a WFP'08 founder.
    - kirubakaran 18y ago
      Thats right, you said you are launching in a week, not getting selected in a week. My bad.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  If you live in the valley, you probably know someone that works at Google. Most Googlers are pretty loose with invites to come for lunch or dinner. In fact, I've heard that Google actually serves nearly a 1:1 ratio of Googlers to non-Googlers every day at dinner (lunch is far more Googler centric) as Googlers often bring family, friends, etc. And despite some gnashing of teeth among the money men at Google over this fact, Sergey has declared that even if Google were to fall on hard times, food would be the last benefit to go.
  - neilk 18y ago
    True. Googlers with kids / spouses tend to bring them in for dinner quite a bit. Which is a pretty fair compensation for the kind of hours Googlers work, IMO. Doing this regularly is officially frowned upon. In fact, you're supposed to register on an internal website if you're planning to bring any guest at all. It's the honor system, but there's technically a limit on the number of guests per month.
- mhartl 18y ago
  I know someone there.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

SwellJoe 18y ago

I used to think spending outlandish sums on employees was a bit silly...until I actually did the math. A lot of people choose to work at Google over working at Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Yahoo, etc. Let's face it, if you can get a job at Google, you can get a job at most of those other places. But, Google pays a lower salary than all of those places for the same position. The way they make Google a more attractive place to work is all of the other non-salary compensation and the general vibe. Even if they spend $30/day/employee on food (I was also shocked by the snack cost alone, which I've heard from folks inside Google...all those $3 juices and such add up fast), it's still not all that big of a deal compared to the thousands they don't spend on salary. Likewise for the dual monitors, Steelcase Leap chairs, and the ergonomics team that Google employs to keep their employees sitting and working comfortably for longer hours. All of this stuff probably comes close to making the cost per employee as high as Microsoft, Yahoo and Sun pay...and yet, Google still gets first pick of the best talent. And it's not because Google employees get to work on cooler stuff--they don't. A large percentage of Googlers work on really boring crap. Building tools to sell ads and scaling them out to a massive scale is probably not an exciting development job. Everybody at this point is probably wondering why MS, Yahoo, and Sun don't just start doing all of the stuff that Google does, and make their workplace as cool and attractive as Google. They can't, of course, because they'd have to lower salaries for everyone in order to open the budget for it (or lock everyone into their current salary for the next couple of years and eat the losses until inflation catches up). And, of course, that would lead to a mass exodus...because nobody will accept a pay cut. Say what you will about Google, but the whole food+massages+snacks+etc. thing is genius on a whole new scale from the recruiting and employee satisfaction perspective. And, since they make $1 million per employee (a number beaten only by Exxon and a few others) they can afford to spend a few grand each year shoveling food into their employees to keep them feeling fat and happy.

procyon 18y ago
Don't know if it really makes sense for companies like MSFT to follow these tactics. Microsoft has around 80,000 employees compare to 16K employees at google. Besides, I think, average age of Microsoft employees is higher than google employees. Free food is not as lucrative for a middle age family man as compare to a new grad. I heard from MSFT old timers that though Microsoft never had free food, they were quite lenient with food in their early days. However, you have a point, in my opinion google has able to attract best tallent. Not sure how much free food accounts for it.

neilk 18y ago

The statistic I heard was $20/day. And there have been cutbacks over the years -- one day they removed a lot of the more exotic snacks and replaced them with bigger bins of bulk cereals. Oh, the outrage on internal mailing lists that day! Google's cafes are so efficient so I wonder how much the labor really adds to the cost. You have chefs and line workers that could work in a high-end restaurant, so salaries are higher, but it's all set up for maximum throughput, so perhaps that makes it cheap. For example, at Yahoo's cafes, there's a lot of made-to-order stuff. You end up waiting up to 10 minutes sometimes, and there are lineups. Everything at Google is premade food done buffet style, or self-serve, like a sandwich bar. At Yahoo I have waited for a long time for someone else to make the sandwich, and sometimes that person doesn't speak English well enough for me to make her understand that no, I don't actually want meat in the sandwich. The Google taqueria is made-to-order, but that is run like an assembly line and you add your own condiments at the end. In the boldest move, Google does away with the checkout line too, which makes throughput incredibly fast. Finally, for whatever reason, Googlers are more conscientious about cleaning their plates before returning them to the cafe. Yahoo has the same sorts of prominently placed garbage cans, but nobody seems to use them. The only reason that getting food at Google might take you more than 3 minutes are a) lines -- a growing problem b) indecision because everything looks so great. Caveat: this is my experience circa 2005-6.