28 ms·

Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies

• satsuma 8y ago
  as someone who works in a place a solid few miles from restaurants, and has a break room with a few microwaves/a toaster oven as well as a vending machine with gas station tier food... how common are workplace cafeterias like this? is it just sv megacompanies or is it smaller firms across the country?
  • acchow 8y ago
    Every remotely-tech-related company with more than 10 employees in San Francisco will provide free food. Only the large ones (more than 500 employees?) will have an on-site kitchen in the cafeteria with dedicated chefs and cooks.
  • bkmartin 8y ago
    I work for a medium sized company in the commercial insurance space in PA. We have a cafeteria. They do charge for meals, but we have access to unlimited drinks. I think larger companies in general will have a cafeteria of some kind, but free food is very much a perk of software companies on the whole, I do believe.
    • satsuma 8y ago
      i don't even mind charging for meals, but not having to spend most of my lunch break driving for easy food would be a huge plus. guess i know what to look for once i graduate.
      • stevenwoo 8y ago
        I've worked in a lot of places with cafeterias in the Bay Area and we still went out to eat a few times a week for variety, a change of pace and to satisfy a desire for some food that was not available or much higher quality than the cafeterias, and since we commuted together from/to restaurants, it was more time spent socializing with coworkers and getting out of the office and getting some sun and fresh air. In my opinion so it might not matter to everyone, it's kind of a waste to live here with this fantastic weather 9-10 months a year and not spend some of that time outdoors, even during the work day.
  • tbyehl 8y ago
    I've worked in several places with on-site cafeterias (IBM, a former IBM site, THD, McKesson, Infostrada, Swisscom). None of them were free tho.
  • arebop 8y ago
    It's pretty much unheard of. Large companies will frequently have cafeterias and they may be partially subsidized but it's very rare that they would be 0 cost to employees. Also, the quality of ingredients and the creativity and care in preparation and presentation is significantly better than I've seen elsewhere, although the executive dining room at global HQ for one of the companies I worked for did rival Facebook or Google's typical cafe experience.
• grahamburger 8y ago
  A place that I worked (not in the bay area) had a cafeteria where employees could eat one meal for free per workday by using a meal ticket. They also cut deals with nearby restaurants so the meal tickets could be used as basically $5 vouchers at the restaurants. That seemed like an OK compromise. Not sure how it worked behind the scenes.
  • optimusclimb 8y ago
    Why should there even be a "compromise"? My employer gives me free health care. Should that be restricted so I have to spend my own dollars and not get the benefit of a group plan? Should employers not be allowed to give a transit subsidy because it hurts Lyft/Uber? Maybe tech companies should not be allowed to offer stock based compensation because it's unfair to other city residents who work jobs without such things.
    • grahamburger 8y ago
      Honestly as an employee it felt like a win all around. If I was tired of the office or my co workers I could go somewhere else. Tried a lot of restaurants I wouldn't have otherwise, so great for them. And the company didn't have to scale their cafeteria as fast as they might have otherwise when hiring.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      My employer gives me free health care. Your health care is not “free” it’s part of your compensation where the employer gets to choose how you’re compensated. I get healthcare via my wife’s insurance and I would much rather have the money. In a sane society, your health care wouldn’t be tied to your employer.
      • optimusclimb 8y ago
        It's "free" in the same sense that the food is.
        • 8y ago
• optimusclimb 8y ago
  Man - California, specifically the Valley, is completely off its rocker when it comes to policy making. I really hope Amazon's new HQ helps pave the way to start de-centralizing the tech industry from that one, overcrowded, and increasingly almost hostile spot.
  • kennxfl 8y ago
    True but its mostly Northern Cal legislators right? I guess restaurants have lobbied successfully. They want some of that tech money too.
    • ng12 8y ago
      > They want some of that tech money too. The strips of bougie overpriced restaurants that haunt Palo Alto, MTV, and Sunnyvale are already getting it.
  • Shikadi 8y ago
    I'd just like to point out that Amazon HQ isn't in California, it's in Washington over near Microsoft, separated by half of California and the state of Oregon. Either way, I hope the same
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • scaryspooky 8y ago
      Poster you're replying to said 'new HQ' indicating their comment was about the place Amazon is shopping to build, not their current Seattle HQ.
      • Shikadi 8y ago
        Right, but it sounded as if they were implying the old HQ was in Silicon Valley. I'm sure that wasn't the intention, just clarifying for the possibility of readers who may misinterpret.
• mnm1 8y ago
  Talk about fascist capitalism. If I ran these companies I'd make everything cost one cent and have a giant barrel of pennies just sitting around with "take what you need" written in it. It's not free anymore. Problem solved.
  • idbehold 8y ago
    That's taxable income then, no?
    • throwaway426079 8y ago
      Even if it is, it's just a few pennies per day.
      • acchow 8y ago
        No, if your employer is giving you $10k worth of meals (their cost to produce them) and charging you $100 for it, you are taxable on the $9,900 benefit.
        • ironjunkie 8y ago
          I don't think it works like that. Do employees today get taxed on the value of the free food ? Why would that be different if it costs 1$ , and how do you define the value of the free food anyways ?
          • jschwartzi 8y ago
            It's technically compensation, so why wouldn't it be taxable?
            • ironjunkie 8y ago
              Do you get taxed on the free coke you get in the break room ? It just doesn't seem to work like that. It would also require to put a $ amount on the price of the "free" meal. Which would not make it free anymore.
• chatmasta 8y ago
  Can anyone comment on the legality of this? IANAL and it’s just a feeling, but it seems like this must be unconstitutional somehow?
  • ggg9990 8y ago
    Nothing in the constitution says that a jurisdiction can’t ban free food.
    • chatmasta 8y ago
      You can’t tell corporations how to spend their money either, as money is a form of speech. Isn’t that the gist of the Citizens United decision?
      • seehafer 8y ago
        You can't tell corporations how to spend their money vis-a-vis political campaigning. It's a much narrower scope than what you're implying.
      • rayiner 8y ago
        No, of course not. Citizens United says you can’t limit a corporations ability to create and distribute a political movie by pretending to regulate money not speech. It has no bearing on what sorts of non-speech activities you can regulate, even though they happen to involve money.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        No, it's not. CU (and before it Buckley v. Valeo) stands (in relevant part) for the idea that the right to spend money on Constitutionally protected expression is itself part of the scope of the right protected. It's not “money is speech” but “the freedom to spend money on speech is part of the freedom of speech”; the former makes a better soundbite and can be a useful memory aid, but loses critical information if taken as the core message.
      • rtkwe 8y ago
• exabrial 8y ago
  "The restriction aims to increase business for local food retailers." Wow. Incredibly corrupt. I'm guessing next lunch boxes are going to be banned?
  • jorts 8y ago
    The stupid thing is that most of the tech companies, outside of the giant ones, get their food from local retailers.
    • ropans808 8y ago
      Yeah, the proposed legislation mentioned in the article in San Francisco just banning the construction of onsite cafeterias seems to recognize this at least.
      • klipt 8y ago
        So you can construct a cafeteria so long as it's "offsite", and even give employees free meals if they show their badge?
        • ropans808 8y ago
          That's how I am reading it. And if their aim is to drum up foot traffic on streets to stimulate local business, I don't think that violates the spirit of the legislation.
    • ng12 8y ago
      Not only that but they employ chefs and kitchen staff to run these cafeterias -- generally under better conditions than most restaurants.
    • gregschlom 8y ago
      This proposal would ban the construction of office cafeterias so if you're just serving free catered food (which is what most small and medium companies do, I'd guess) it's fine.
• panzagl 8y ago
  This is how businesses get driven to the suburbs.
  • rbranson 8y ago
    FWIW, Mountain View is definitely a suburb, and was the first city to propose the ban.
  • seehafer 8y ago
    That is the usual refrain from the "die techie scum" SF denizens: "go back to the suburbs!" Unfortunately the suburbs are now hostile too: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-Means-New-Business-for-Mountain-View-Restaurants-488948401.html https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-M...
    • dunpeal 8y ago
      MTV isn't "hostile" to tech. It just got greedy and is trying to get more out of its resident tech companies. "So we have all these big tech companies opening offices in our town... How do we get more out of them... Let's force their employees to buy their food in local stores by banning free food... Let's tax them a bit more..." Etc. This will work in the short term, especially when some of these rules only apply to new offices. It will fail on the long term, as more and more companies question the wisdom of setting up shops in the Valley and California in general, and move to locations with much lower tax and restrictions, such as Austin TX.
      • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
        >It will fail on the long term, as more and more companies question the wisdom of setting up shops in the Valley and California in general, and move to locations with much lower tax and restrictions, such as Austin TX. But that will only last a decade or two before they turn Austin (or wherever) into SF 2.0 and all the business goes elsewhere.
        • 8y ago
• ropans808 8y ago
  This is very interesting, I had never considered the impact free food at a large office has on its surroundings. The legislation certainly sounds backwards, but to me the situation is reminiscent of a company using profits from one sector to subsidize another, in order to drown out competitors in that space. I don't think Facebook is actually trying to kill off restaurants, but this is definitely how you would do it in an anti-competitive way.
  • GordonS 8y ago
    I don't see what's anticompetitive about it - surely they buy the food they give out from local retailers?
    • sundaeofshock 8y ago
      A food wholesaler and a restaurant are two entirely different businesses.
      • patejam 8y ago
        I think the idea is that it's still a local business that handles it. And it's locals who are hired to prepare the food, just like a local restaurant.
      • GordonS 8y ago
        What makes a restaurant a more 'worthy' business that a food retailer or wholesaler?
• throwaway426079 8y ago
  Does anyone know if the government tried to get any of the companies to try to partner with local food places? Like grahamburger mentioned in their post?
  • plorkyeran 8y ago
    Most of the companies which provide free lunches do partner with local food places.
• sonnyblarney 8y ago
  My bet is that it makes no difference. FB workers are rich, and they'll not want to eat every day in the caf, and they'll be out and about as much as they would otherwise. The alternative won't be 'restos' it will be 'the microwave'.
  • beenBoutIT 8y ago
    It's going to make a huge difference in terms of FB's appeal to potential employees. Who wants to work at FB if it means that you'll have to waste time and energy figuring out what to do for lunch every day?
    • lovich 8y ago
      I dont think that's considered a deal breaker for most people, or even a major consideration
      • anonytrary 8y ago
        It could easily break a tie. If I can save an hour everyday because I don't have to figure out lunch/dinner, then that's more time for me.
        • selectodude 8y ago
          People in literally every where else in the world live for that hour of lunchtime away from work, so I think (hope?) you're in the minority.
          • scarejunba 8y ago
            Yeah, but their coworkers suck. I like mine.
          • genocidicbunny 8y ago
            Getting away from work doesn't have to mean getting away from your coworkers and your workplace. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty good about leaving my work at my desk -- when I get up to wander around, or to take a break, I don't have to leave my workplace to be 'away from work'. And is trading your coworkers for pushy crowds of strangers and traffic nightmares really that good of a deal? Because in MTV, that's what you're trading for. Getting away from work at lunch means dealing with even bigger and even more annoying crowds.
• kyleblarson 8y ago
  Much easier for city councils to virtue signal on non issues rather than tackling the sea of needles and shit on their sidewalks.
  • inevitable2 8y ago
    Agree. Another reason why I'm sure some don't want to walk outside. You lose your appetite pretty quick seeing needles and poop everywhere.
  • masterleep 8y ago
    If you take a giant shit on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant, SF will roll out a red carpet for you, but God forbid you try to give an employee a free lunch or a plastic straw.
• ironjunkie 8y ago
  This is one of the most stupid policy I have ever seen in the bay area (and there are a lot of stupid ones over here). As much as I dislike some of the big tech cos and the TechBros working there bragging about the free food all the time, I still believe a company should be able to decide if they want to offer food or not. Restaurants were unable to turn a profit, so they lobbied successfully and now everyone beside them got a worse outcome. This is economy 101. A highly visible group of people lobbied hard (in this case the restaurants), and they put a small burden on everyone else to have their issue resolved. However when you calculate the outcome, the burden on everyone else is bigger than the gain that the highly visible group got out of it. Everyone is worse off.
  • sonnyblarney 8y ago
    To be fair, it's not quite 'economy 101'. Or rather, 'economy 101' is that anyone with enough leverage, will use monopoly powers in one area, to take control of an adjacent economy. American Oil empires were not built on some new amazing way to get at oil, it was because some had control of the railroads, and charged their competitors a little more to transport therefore putting them out of business (through aggressive consolidation). The FB cafeteria example is not a very good one admittedly, but an alternative could be 'they buy up all the restaurants in the area and make them exclusively available for FB staff'. Which they very well could do, and it would then seem kind of crazy, no? Economically speaking, it would be 'above bar'. After all, 'free market', right? If neighbourhood residents want to eat in a restaurant, screw them, they can go across town! We live in communities, not economies. The city ordinance is stupid, but the motivation is not. Ironically, these are 'rich people problems' ... the kinds of things that happen when little dots of wealth blow up and there is a huge economic inequality, even if most people are 'kind of well off'.
    • bumholio 8y ago
      > an alternative could be 'they buy up all the restaurants in the area and make them exclusively available for FB staff'. If Facebook is willing to pay substantial amounts of money for a restaurant, while at the same time guaranteeing customers to those who refuse to sell, it would seem the number of public restaurants in the area will explode.
• ksec 8y ago
  How about Tech companies spin out their Cafe and require their worker to pay for it? The companies would have owned the property, and making the meal cost at least 30% cheaper.
  • adt2bt 8y ago
    That's pretty similar to what Microsoft does with its myriad Cafés on campus. The food seemed cheaper than a restaurant, as if they charge for labor + ingredients. You could only order there as an employee or guest of an employee, though.
• kazinator 8y ago
  > San Francisco Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies ... ... while they hand out hundreds of thousands of free needles that end up on the street, among shit.
  • RIMR 8y ago
    I don't see how this is related at all. Still sounds better than an AIDS epidemic.
  • toomanybeersies 8y ago
    I live in one of the heroin hotspots of Australia, where they hand out free needles like candy. It's better than the alternative, which is people sharing needles and giving each other all sorts of diseases. Not only do they hand out free needles though, but also free sharps containers, and there are needle disposal bins all over the place for users to drop their used needles in. I'm not sure how they convinced all the heroin users to dispose of their needles correctly, but they've done a fairly good job. It's rare for me to see a needle on the street.
  • dev_dull 8y ago
    You can take a dump and shoot heroine on the sidewalk but God help you if you if you hand out a plastic straw or offer somebody a cup of water in a restaurant. What a utopia we live in.
• beamatronic 8y ago
  There is a lot of good food in this area (San Antonio shopping center in Mountain View), places that would draw the workers on their own merits anyway. Sajj, Chef Chu’s, Dittmers, Mamacitas food truck, Paul Martin, Pacific Fresh, several pho places, I could go on.
  • lern_too_spel 8y ago
    Exactly. A big tech office next door will only give them nore customers than they have already, even if the office has its own cafeteria. Why are they forcing everybody to leave their office to eat?
• DannyBee 8y ago
  Since the article doesn't have it that i saw, here's the text of the facebook development condition in san antonio center: ""CAFETERIA CONDITION: In order to foster synergy between office, restaurant, and retail uses in the Center and realize the economic vitality of the project, the project anticipates employees in the office space will utilize food and retail services available in the Center. The applicant will encourage tenants and employees of tenants to utilize food and retail services available in the Center. Neither the applicant nor tenant(s) will subsidize meals by more than fifty percent (50%) or provide free meals for employees in the office space on a regular daily basis. An employer can subsidize or pay for employee meals as long as they are patronizing restaurants in the Center. In addition: The applicant may make a request to amend this condition. The City Manager or a designee may make a recommendation to the City Council on this matter."
• pjspycha 8y ago
  Cannot bundle a free meal with your job because it's abusing your position to stifle competition. I jest but I imagine it may be hard for some restaurants to open and offer lunch menu's in these areas.
• im3w1l 8y ago
  I can kind of see where Mountain View is coming from, basically the "San Antonio Center" (if you didn't read the article, MV is only applying the restriction in that particular place, not in the whole MV) is one of two places in MV with some life and bustle (it's kinda the day destination, having a bunch of grocery shops as well as a walmart, kohls and target and the other is kind of the night destination, being more focused around restaurants and nightclubs), and if they allow some big company to have their own cafeterias and self-segregate it could risk killing the life of the place. One thing they should do in my opinion is make the place more pedestrian friendly. Maybe they could replace the big parking lots that create sprawl with denser garages?
  • lern_too_spel 8y ago
    Why would it risk killing the life of the place? The people who already eat lunch there will still eat lunch there. This is simply a money grab by the people who happen to already be there, just like Prop 13 and rent control.
    • bobthepanda 8y ago
      Large employers moving in and increasing land value would also increase the rent that a commercial landlord could get for offices vs. restaurants. Restaurants get no upside to this since it's very hard to compete with free. And this is before we consider that new companies moving in with free cafeterias could be replacing old companies with no free cafeterias.
• beenBoutIT 8y ago
  California's found a unique way to incorporate only the shitty parts of European socialism without adding in any of the massive benefits. We get the same high taxes and restrictive overreaching laws without any of the free healthcare, free university tuition, or pension plans.
  • millermp12 8y ago
    Don't worry. The Party Formerly Known As European Socialism is about to go tits up. But at least they'll get to go Full Diversity!
  • 21 8y ago
    How is this European socialism? I'm unaware of such restriction in Europe. Also, the zoning rules in most of Europe are much saner.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• otterpro 8y ago
  Company-provided lunch provides an opportunity to build relationship among the coworkers. Most people do not says "no" to free lunch, especially if it's good. So, they naturally sit down together to eat. When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together and get to know about each other, which is not possible through Slack nor via meetings. Just hanging out with everyone on the team, talking about the latest Marvel movie or Star wars, etc. It was also about convenience as well as reducing stress and decisions on an already-busy day. If the team still wants to do lunch together everyday at an outside restaurant, it would not be easy, especially the logistics, which would be a nightmare -- getting everyone to agree on one place where everyone likes their food, finding a place that can seat the entire group at a single table, finding transportation / assigning driver/riders if it's beyond walking distance, and having to divide the check afterward (or Venmo), etc. Just for a meal that lasts no more than an hour, top.
  • gmueckl 8y ago
    It gets easier when the routine settles in. Eventually you will find a kind of schedule that suits everyone. Then it is mostly a matter of a few quick questions and maybe a call ahead with preorders. I have it seen working well with very different teams.
  • scarface74 8y ago
    When I worked at a company that offered free lunch, the company used it to help build rapport and camaraderie among the coworkers. It's one time during the day when the entire team can sit down and eat lunch together and get to know about each other, which is not possible through Slack nor via meetings. I stopped bringing my lunch to work and go out to eat specifically to get a break from my coworkers. Not that there is anything wrong with my coworkers, but I really enjoy the alone time in the middle of the day where I can just sit back and read.
    • EchoAce 8y ago
      And that’s great if that’s what you want. OP was just saying that free, internal lunch promotes team bonding for those who do desire it.
• kup0 8y ago
  I don't see any positive outcome to policy that tries to restrict benefits companies can offer? In a nation where many companies don't offer the greatest benefits anyway, it seems rather atrocious. I get that this is localized in an area that has companies that probably offer better benefits than most others, but the idea of restricting benefits at all seems ludicrous to me
  • smsm42 8y ago
    This is especially funny if one remembers the genesis of fringe benefits in the US. Those proliferated after, in the years of WWII, the government moved to cap salaries paid by companies. The companies, looking to attract best workers, started to offer a variety of fringe benefits - health insurance, lodging, life insurance, free food, free clothes ("uniform"), etc. The regulation treadmill never stops, there's always a need to introduce new regulation to fix things broken by the previous regulation.
• millermp12 8y ago
  Good! Next I hope they pass a law requiring all guys to compliment the homely wallflower once a day and not just mack on the hot chicks. To the barricades!
• tzs 8y ago
  I was not surprised when I read the headline, but I was surprised when I saw the reason when I read the article. I had expected it would be over taxes. From the photos and description in the article and elsewhere, it looks like you can get full meals for free, meals that would cost at least $10 if bought at retail. An employee who took two meals a day at the free company cafeteria every working day would be getting a benefit worth almost $5000/year. That's equivalent to something like an extra $8000/year salary. I believe that food provided to employees is normally not taxable for the employee, and is actually deductible as a business expense by the employer (but I've not looked into how the recent major tax changes may have affected that), but I think that was intended for things like where employees have to remain available for emergencies during meal periods, or where meal breaks are too short to allow employees time to go get food, and things like that. The term of art is that the meals have to be provided for the employer's convenience. In the short meal break case, for example, providing meals is for the employer's convenience because it saves them from having to offer longer meal breaks. Meals offered for things like goodwill, morale, or attracting employees are not considered to be for the employer's convenience, but are still OK if they are de minimis. So things like donuts, soft drinks, meals when employees have to take occasional overtime, the occasional company party or picnic, and things like that are fine. Putting in a cafeteria that offers free full meals to all employees all the time probably is not de minimis. It may not actually violate tax laws, but if it does not it is pushing the limits hard so I'd certainly not be surprised to see attempts to crack down from that angle.
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    Except of course that the value of the food is not $10 because it is not being bought retail. So the real value is probably more like $2, and even at two full meals per day that would translate to 200 working days times $4 is about $800.
    • ams6110 8y ago
      The IRS values stuff like this at fair market value, not wholesale cost. The benefit to the employee is a meal that they would otherwise have to buy at retail. So that's how it's valued. If they were to enforce it.
• dev_dull 8y ago
  These cities really are trying their hardest to kill their golden goose.
  • commandlinefan 8y ago
    Yeah, really. Big tech companies, come down here to Texas. With your well-above-market-average salaries and free food.
    • anonymous5133 8y ago
      Austin is already a pretty big tech hub
      • iamdave 8y ago
        And is already stretching that tiny town thin wrt housing. I gtfo. Felt like the San Francisco of Texas, and not in a way I felt like fighting/putting up with.
        • StudentStuff 8y ago
          Its impressive how a whole corner of the city has been rebuilt for Apple. Not saying I'd wanna live down there, that area has basically no bus service, and is straddled on all sides by freeways and highways (making walking/biking risky), but $1k will get you a decent 1 bed/1 bath apartment blocks from the office. That being said, Apple pays people peanuts down there, $32k/yr as a contractor ain't much.
          • iamdave 8y ago
            That being said, Apple pays people peanuts down there, $32k/yr as a contractor ain't much. This is a problem across the entire tech industry. When it comes to staff and employees who don't have three letters following their name, one of them the letter "C", there's the engineers who make six figures, and then there's everybody else.
    • 8y ago
• Roritharr 8y ago
  This is very interesting for me for a very different reason: We're in Germany where this is taxed heavily. If you offer your employees free meals, this becomes part of their taxable income, so you actually have to give them a raise to even this out, and then you have employees that want to opt-out to get the hands on that cash... I always wondered how Google Germany deals with this. There is a minimum below which it doesn't get taxed and specific items like coffee, water etc fall out of this, but it blew my mind the first time I was trying to set something like this up for our company.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • baxtr 8y ago
    What I’ve learned early: tax law is subject to negotiation. Depending how well your tax department connects and negotiates with the responsible tax office you can structure things like that.
  • patmcguire 8y ago
    They are in the US as well. There's some exception if you can make a case that it's for the employer's benefit, not the employee's. Everyone says it is, and no one tries very hard to tax it.
  • ghein 8y ago
    It's taxable in the US as well. There have been occasional attempts to enforce the law - IRS recently made noises in 2014/15. The challenge is that it's taxable to the employees but hard to track and prove, it's for relatively little money per employee, and the firms argue that it's for their benefit to secure information/improve productivity/build cohesion... Google can and will fight far harder than the IRS is willing to on this issue and the IRS isn't entirely sure that they'd win. The IRS can spend resources in places to make a much higher return with an almost certain chance of success. So no effective taxes on meals. To make it happen in your company, follow the Google and Uber strategy. Just do it and deal with the law later. Your ability to pay any fines later may be different from Google's and the chance that one of your employees will call the tax office on you may be dramatically higher because Germany.
• arkona4 8y ago
  > The restriction aims to increase business for local food retailers I spilled my coffee. This is straight out of Atlas Shrugged.
• post_break 8y ago
  This reminds me of the Steve Blank story about when companies stop giving out free soda: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
  • 0003 8y ago
    Came for this link.
• carbocation 8y ago
  This feels politically coherent: it strikes a populist chord, but just furthers the rent-seeking interests in the area. It's of the same ilk as NIMBYism, but this time, it's a different form of rent.
  • ghein 8y ago
    Note that the Golden Gate Restaurant Association supported the 2 supervisors who introduced the measure and has provided quotes as to how good an idea it is. No one has mentioned the jobs to be destroyed in catering, nor the fact that catering jobs pay far better than restaurants for all the people making the food!
• Sushi-san 8y ago
  This reminds me of WeWork's company-wide ban of meat for employees.
• JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > The ban wouldn't be retroactive, however, so on-site food at companies like Google and Twitter would still be available Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents. (Does anyone know the story behind this bill? Which politicians and restaurants supported it? I’d like to avoid the latter going forward.)
  • noahsark769 8y ago
    In SF, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safai: http://www.sfexaminer.com/supervisors-move-ban-workplace-cafeterias/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/supervisors-move-ban-workplace-caf...
  • FLUX-YOU 8y ago
    >Cool, so start-ups lose a potential hiring perk to the incumbents. They could just do something similar to what colleges do: - increase salaries just a bit - but the increased salary goes to a food card - employees can't easily turn this into cash - you swipe it and "pay" - the company is essentially paying for the employee's food Money changes hands, but no one is at a net loss than what a free food perk would cost.
    • trendia 8y ago
      This would make demand less elastic, pushing restaurant prices up for the rest of us.
      • dunpeal 8y ago
        Absolutely. This will increase demand and raise prices.
    • hellisothers 8y ago
      Problem is the employee is taxed on those funds AND those funds aren’t tax deductible for the employer like dine in (50%) or in house food (100%) so it’s nowhere near comperable.
• justinzollars 8y ago
  I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid. As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion. This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do? I'm enraged.
  • DeepYogurt 8y ago
    If all tech workers went out for lunch every day that would be a huge boon to the local low skill labor market.
    • Vordax 8y ago
      What about all the employees that work in the cafeterias at Facebook?
      • tidon12 8y ago
        This is the real point. The idea that somehow the catering business serving startups or the kitchen workers in cafes are somehow less worthy of support than owners of restaurants
        • dunpeal 8y ago
          To be fair, there are a lot of efficiency gains and economies of scale involved. Google pays a lot less to provide an employee with a nutritious, healthy meal than the same employee would be paying for a less healthy meal in your typical local restaurant. So this law will create more local jobs in the short term... except the next Techplex will not be built in MTV, which will lose it far more local jobs than it gained.
          • extradego 8y ago
            Great points. If only the public could elect the officials in charge at Google so these kinds of efficiencies could benefit the whole of society... Wait... I think that’s called democratic socialism. Oh and hey I found a website for it. Check it out: https://dsausa.org https://dsausa.org Awesome! Don’t confuse this restaurant nonsense for a leftist progressive agenda. This is moderate hype designed to appease small business owners without affecting corporate profits or contending with systematic income inequality. Broadly speaking, those cafeteria workers have nothing to lose either way. A real left agenda would seek to change that.
• United857 8y ago
  I live about 10 minutes from this location, and often frequent the restaurants there. It's smack dab in a high-traffic area (San Antonio+El Camino) and judging from the crowds, I can assure you that they get plenty of business already from the local community, even without Facebook. That said, I would still have no problem if it was the landlord (WeWork) making this restriction, instead of the MTV government. This is a private business-to-business matter, and shouldn't be the domain of government.
• pascalxus 8y ago
  So, are tech companies going to finally leave the bay area or what? I can see we're not welcome here.
• danmg 8y ago
  Now the perk will be $1 meals instead of free.
• nissimk 8y ago
  Folks, these companies can still offer free food. At smaller companies in NY that don't have a cafeteria but want to keep the employees in for lunch they give out a seamless allowance. It works quite well. Not sure if it would scale to an office with thousands of workers but it probably could. Some places also order catering from local food vendors.
• dmode 8y ago
  This title is a little hyperbolic. There has exactly been two proposals. One in Mountain View, that only applies to a single office development. That also doesn't ban office cafeterias, but limits subsidies. The other one is in proposal stages in SF, which is a regulatory capture by the local restaurant industry. Unlikely to pass
• elheffe80 8y ago
  If it were my company- everything would be $0.01, thus not free. Stupid rule.
• nostrademons 8y ago
  Lotta hate for Mountain View in the comments here, which is ironic because with this ordnance Mountain View is trying to fix a problem that tech companies get a lot of hate on HN for. I've got mixed feelings about this, so I'll try and explain both sides: The problem MV's fixing is the perception that highly-paid tech workers have become a class of their own, isolated from the larger communities in which they live and insulated from negative social consequences in the communities around them. When you get paid a high salary, eat at work, only socialize with coworkers, have all your logistic needs taken care of by your rich employer, and only go home to sleep, it's really easy to feel like your city's problems are other peoples' problems. In other threads on HN, you will see plenty of mudslinging about tech workers who step over homeless people on their way to work or kick neighborhood teams off a public basketball court so they can play a company game. The Village at San Antonio is supposed to be exactly the type of mixed-use, mixed-income development that urban planners salivate over today. It's got a mix of luxury apartments and affordable housing over street-level retail, connected by pedestrian thoroughfares to the office space that Facebook is about to rent. There are over a dozen restaurants within walking distance, ranging from Chili's, Veggie Grill, and Sajj to The Counter burgers to upscale sit-down places, along with a Walmart, a Safeway, and a Whole Foods. The whole point is to fix all the problems with tech insularity and wealth polarization that everyone complains about here. OTOH, the cynic in me says that it won't actually do a damn thing about this, and that tech workers will stand around talking to each other and ignoring the locals in line for Veggie Grill while the service workers around them eat at the Walmart cafeteria. And the only effect will be to reduce efficiency for people who could otherwise just grab free food, take it back to their desk, and get back to work. A lot of the point of the free cafes at Google was to cut out the friction of deciding where to eat, walking there, and paying, and instead just focus on the job we had to do. There's no free lunch. Sometimes it turns out our desires are contradictory, and the flip side of intangibles like community engagement are reduced efficiency and heavy-handed regulation.
  • ardit33 8y ago
    Yeah, the Communist party in Albania had a great way to deal with 'community involvment' Every first Sunday of the month (Sundays were the only days people had off, as Saturdays were actually work day), people were required to get out, and help clean out the neighborhood in 'cleaning actions'. If you didn't do it, you'd be reprimanded, and if you didn't comply you'd be sent into re-education class, on how community involvement was crucial to a good communist society. If you still didn't comply then you'd be sent off to some 'action' in some more remote area. Anyways, this is not communist 'community involvement' level yet, but the government should have no say on a person's personal private time.
• gnopgnip 8y ago
  More specifically they are prohibiting on site kitchens. They are not prohibiting free food that is catered.
• gnicholas 8y ago
  This was covered by the local news [1] and the city council member who was interviewed said: > “We felt the employees who work there should be able to patronize the businesses—the smaller businesses—in this shopping center” Employees already have the ability to patronize these businesses. This law is about compelling patronage. 1: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-Means-New-Business-for-Mountain-View-Restaurants-488948401.html https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/New-Facebook-Offices-M...
  • sverige 8y ago
    Yes, compelling people to buy things that ought to be a personal and private decision is a very popular policy position for governments to take in recent years.
    • toomanybeersies 8y ago
      The government isn't compelling you to go to the local shopping centre. You can still order off Amazon.
      • emilfihlman 8y ago
        Still. But given this, can you say it will be for long?
  • null000 8y ago
    It's really not compelling them. Employees are free to bring their food from home, or order outside the shopping center. It's keeping a handle on incentives, which is what any good government should be doing - incentivizing behavior that's good for the community and disincentivizing behavior that isn't. In this case, they're removing the ability for facebook to keep the path of least resistance for food on campus to encourage people to eat outside the office, since they're already putting a bunch of effort into making the mixed-use retail/office/living area. Calling this compulsion is like calling taxes slavery - you might feel strongly about the situation, it might impact you negatively, but don't expect much sympathy from those outside the bubble...
• acchow 8y ago
  Laughable. Do these politicians think that the food is conjured out of thin air with magic? These cafeterias are located in the city (just like a restaurant would be), creating jobs in the city (just like a restaurant would), paying good wages and benefits to these people (unlike most restaurants would).
  • masterleep 8y ago
    Yes but since the food came from hated tech companies, it is tainted and must be banned.
  • knuththetruth 8y ago
    >paying good wages and benefits to these people 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.
    • srinivasan 8y ago
      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.
      • toomanybeersies 8y ago
        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.
• justizin 8y ago
  I can see the motivation here for the SF legislation, it is problematic that we tend not to leave the office for lunch, but there are some major issues that the author, Asha Safai, has clearly missed: (a) Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Genentech are grandfathered into their cafeterias, and it's fairly unlikely any other companies will build cafeterias. (b) This is partially because most companies are too small for a dedicated cafeteria, so they use a catering service like ZeroCater, which source most meals from local restaurants that don't do much or any lunch service. (c) There are other companies like Gap, which have a cafeteria largely because there is nothing near their office but parking lots, and they are next to UCSF which certainly has at least one cafeteria at that location. I think there is work to be done here, I think that this does tie into other problems like housing and general rent, but I don't think it's a good solution to it. One of the major ways this misses the boat is that there are lower paid employees in tech companies, often contractors, who have access to free food in ways that substantially makes life more affordable for them. So yes, engineers pulling six figures are maybe given a little toooo much perks, but when that is spread around, I'm strongly in favor of it. There are people in these tech offices making not much more than minimum wage, and I'm not just talking about janitorial and maintenance staff - I'm talking about CS, QA, UX contractors and all manner of other office work. Safai is not really a progressive, so he's probably come up with this idea to overcompensate for that and appeal to progressives. This doesn't really sound like Aaron Peskin, either, who mostly works to coalition build and is primarily focused on housing policy. I would suspect that Peskin is supporting this to get Safai to work with him on some other bill, and that he expects it to fail.
  • jtmcmc 8y ago
    also genentech is in south san franscisco
  • smokey_the_bear 8y ago
    I worked at Genentech in 2004. My recollection is that there are zero restaurants nearby, and that I had to park in garage and then ride a shuttle to the office due to limited parking. Not having the excellent cafeteria would have been a hassle there.
• urda 8y ago
  Bay Area should focus on fixing the housing crisis, homeless issue, traffic congestion, and a dying BART system. But at the same time, I'm not shocked. This is a classic California move and government overstep.
• harlanji 8y ago
  If I read correctly, Alphabet can just add another letter that's a catering company with a commercial kitchen and bring all the meals in on trucks. "Startups" don't have their own food preparation operations as-is, they use catering or similar food delivery which seem unaffected. Maybe the people affected don't realize that. More demand from those services might even make them cheaper as more players enter the space. I don't see who loses, unless "kitchen" extends all the way down to stocked pantries and dish washers. No opinions of my own offered here. I've enjoyed offices with and without meal options in SoMa and around the Bay.
• sabujp 8y ago
  What's stopping FB from ordering catering and pre-packaged meals for their employess from one of these large contract companies : https://www.food-management.com/top-50-contract-companies https://www.food-management.com/top-50-contract-companies ?
• torgian 8y ago
  This is a good thing if done correctly. Companies could potentially use free food and other facilities (at the company) as an excuse to give a lower wage. There’s also perceived pressure to stay late and work. Why go home when you have everything you need at work?
• taf2 8y ago
  Wow what in the crazy head reason did they have to not want to allow companies to offer free food?? The impact of this would be more traffic at lunch time right and didn’t the Bay Area already have terrible traffic ?
• htmlfan 8y ago
  Can everyone in this thread stop assuming Facebook employees are rich? There are plenty of non-engineering employees who make $50K for example and the free meals offer a huge benefit to them and even their families.
• Johnny555 8y ago
  If cities want employees to patronize local businesses, they they should start providing enough housing so employees can live near work. Stop forcing employees to live 30 miles away by restricting housing and then complain "But why won't they shop here!?"
  • bob_theslob646 8y ago
    Highly underrated comment.
  • TomMarius 8y ago
    No, they should stop getting in the way of housing. Definitely not provide it, that's just calling for a catastrophe as we can see from policies like this one.
    • Johnny555 8y ago
      I didn't mean "provide" as in the city building housing themselves, but meant "provide" as in to make planning decisions that allow developers to build higher density housing, especially near existing transit.
      • TomMarius 8y ago
        Oh, okay. Many people actually think the government should be the organization that builds and then provides housing. :-/
• benkarst 8y ago
  This is the beginning of the end for SF. Now that the techies are forced to experience the third world standards of the city, they will move to more habitable cities, like Detroit.
• mycodebreaks 8y ago
  But, doesn't this contradict the spirit of free markets?
  • noarchy 8y ago
    Do you think that matters one bit to those who advocate for these kinds of measures? Not everyone is a proponent of free markets, and some of them are in positions of power - and this kind of measure should illustrate that in abundance.
• augbog 8y ago
  I want to say this is the least rude way but I'll just say it -- this really seems like an oversight of local restaurants being unable to adapt to the market they have. It's similar to how certain stores who failed to realize online retail failed. Right now, with tech it's heavily favored toward catered food which local restaurants don't necessarily specialize in. At my start up we have a generic catering company that will have a rotating meal each day. It's cost-effective and still good quality food and removes the hassle of our Workplace Services from figuring out what food we should get next time. If local restaurants could adapt to such a model and made more of an effort to advertise toward their market and perhaps arrange a monthly catered meal or something of the sort, they might see themselves doing better.
  • null000 8y ago
    > this really seems like an oversight of local restaurants being unable to adapt to the market they have I mean, how are you supposed to compete against cafeterias that get to literally embed themselves in a campus? > At my start up we have a generic catering company that will have a rotating meal each day FWIU that would still be allowed under the rules everyone's complaining about.
• rpearl 8y ago
  All the ripple effects of this are so poorly thought out. There'd be environmental effects--all that takeout is going to come in disposable containers instead of reusable plates. There'd be delivery congestion--personal delivery and catering increases. There's the fact that you're just putting tech kitchen workers out of a steady, consistent job (not to mention, those workers don't rely on tips!). And then at the end of the day, most people aren't going to go to sit-down restaurants to spend $20 on a sandwich in SF; they're just going to bring food from home.
  • null000 8y ago
    > putting tech kitchen workers out of a steady, consistent job From what I understand, pretty much 100% of the work is fulfilled by contractors. While I could be wrong, that's not what I would call a "steady, consistent job"
• imh 8y ago
  If they do this for food, they should do it for coffee. Even more companies have free coffee than have free food. Just think of all the new cafes that could survive and the jobs that would add! \s
• mesozoic 8y ago
  As someone not in Bay Area I find it hilarious. As someone who may have to move there it's enraging.
• mesozoic 8y ago
  So from reading the regulation it appears Facebook can just open a public restaurant in the center. Charge $200 per meal but subsidize it completely for their own employees.
• hithereagain 8y ago
  Aren't these free meals essentially untaxed compensation for employees?
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• really3452 8y ago
  Ummm, just pack a lunch? Really, why would you spend a bunch of time in the middle of your work day to go out for lunch. I just want to get my work done so I can enjoy rest of the day. Seriously, on days I forget to bring lunch I just skip it and eat later, no big deal.
• derekdahmer 8y ago
  Honestly the most offensive part of this is the tired Silicon Valley stereotype that tech workers don't "participate in the local economy" or "interact with their community". The people I know in SF tech take BART, grocery shop, buy coffee, go to bars, go out for dinner, buy clothes, buy and sell on craigslist, hang out in parks, play soccer, bike, go dancing, date, have kids, etc, all in their city just like everyone else. We are not that different from any other professional industry and shouldn't let people imply that we somehow contribute less to this city.
  • sj123 8y ago
    This! When tech workers make up more than an eighth of the city's population and are some of the biggest local tax contributors as well.
• jiveturkey 8y ago
  one zoned development decision made 4 years ago, and one new proposal now is a crackdown? please.
• stretchwithme 8y ago
  Maybe its time for companies to consider building cities that just serve their needs and that are connected to existing cities by high speed rail. Build the housing too. You can't really do that in the coastal areas but maybe inland or in states like Arizona or New Mexico. Put it all under a solar dome so you can control the heat. Okay, maybe that's too much :-)
• picsao 8y ago
  This is the free market voting for a end to aristocracy communism
• StClaire 8y ago
  Could tech companies charge a penny and take it out of employees paychecks?
• ajmurmann 8y ago
  Techies in the Bay area need to get more involved in local politics. They are what makes the area tick and without them nobody would give a shit about the area. This finally need to get reflected in local politics, not nimby and keeping crap like it was in the seventies. Let's build that damn city from Blade Runner!
• neap24 8y ago
  So, let me get this straight. Bay Area creates legislation like building codes, permitting, increased minimum wage etc. that makes it very expensive to open and run a restaurant. That is probably reflected in the food prices, which makes subsidized food at work an attractive perk. To counteract this problem, even more legislation is proposed.
• kirubakaran 8y ago
  There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
• buss 8y ago
  This is pure political theater and a distraction from real issues. This has two possible outcomes: 1. The "Progressive" majority on the Board of Supervisors passes it and Mayor Breed vetoes it, giving Progressives yet another "you're a shill for big tech!" line of attack 2. It doesn't make it out of committee and everybody quickly forgets what an ass Aaron Peskin is Just ignore it and donate to reform-minded leaders like Theo Ellington, Sonja Trauss, and Christine Johnson.
• catpawsandwich 8y ago
  I'll end this by saying "this is so f*cking stupid." It is not the problem of the business that decides to plant itself in a location and provide food first off. All the vendors of that location are privy to supply... unless this large corp has signed a contract with a specific vendor. However, if they did, the individual food vendor would never know because it would be like the corp planned to not make a footprint. So they just provided food. nbd. So they did not hurt the local market and keeping it inward. So now outside food vendors are irritated because a precaution was put in place to not affect them, but "an unknown - of growing" got too big and now they feel they can't survive next to their neighbor. --Valid point. So how do we as big corps help the neighbor... and this is not just about food.
• contingencies 8y ago
  Total cost to businesses is huge. Assume you have employees on an average salary of USD$140K (example round figure) doing 7 hours work with 1 hour for lunch. Ignoring the staggering environmental impact, if you lose an extra 30 minutes (1/14th of the 7 hour work day) because of transport and parking bullshit due to this new rule, then you are effectively losing USD$10K per annum per employee.
• catpawsandwich 8y ago
  Everyone knows that while deep in code, running out to get food wastes a shitload of time. 30min travel. 15min to eat(best case if rushing)worse if farther. These Golden Gate Restaurant Association people do not have any observation of that because they do not code on a regurlar basis. Not to mention, the 15 mins lost by distraction. So much wasted time because they can't get their restaurant into a cafeteria. Did they offer to vendor to the cafeteria? How were they doing before the cafeteria showed up. I'm sure they were doing just the same.
• vzaliva 8y ago
  Cracking down on cafeterias might bring some business to the restaurants, but it takes away business from people running these cafeterias: cooks, cleaning staff, grocery delivery, etc. Most of these people are local. So it is basically re-distribution of income between two different groups of Mountain View residents and as such is pretty pointless, economically. P.S. I work at MTV area and finding parking at lunch is already a challenge. With the influx of Facebook lunchgoers, it will become impossible to park in downtown.
• seanhandley 8y ago
  Another victory for the bag lunch.
• WalterBright 8y ago
  "cracking down" ?? They aren't doing anything wrong.
• flak48 8y ago
  So catering industry workers' (and tech) jobs are less important than restaurant workers jobs - according to California city councils.
• FrozenVoid 8y ago
  This ridiculous law can be easily bypassed with vending machines and food delivery directly to office(doesn't even have to be out of building, making food on-site is not illegal).