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Agree. The place I work had diverse companies in a 'tech park' - Amazon, Google, and many others inside a gated office space, the total population of which cou
by achow 4y ago
Agree.
The place I work had diverse companies in a 'tech park' - Amazon, Google, and many others inside a gated office space, the total population of which could easily surpass 10K.
We used to have a common and very vibrant food court, even though each company used to give free cafeteria food, employees used to walk to the common food court for variety - of both people and food.
Also, since there was so much traffic of well paid, propensity to spend people, office park operation office used to arrange for paid fun stuff during lunch hours, which used to lend lot of colors to dreary office days.
During Covid the food court vanished along with all fun activities (consequently all those people who used to run those). The company cafeteria obviously closed as well and even when it has started now, they are pale shadow of earlier operations (less staff, owners of food counters working as staff).
- alexalx666 4y agoIt's kind of shocking to read the phrase "vibrant food court". If this was the bar before COVID it can only get better.
- sverhagen 4y agoYou can think of the generic food courts in the typical US mall, but there are also plenty more boutique food malls around.
- bin_bash 4y agoRead up on Singapore’s hawker centres for an idea of what’s possible with food courts
- gumby 4y agoThose are the result of forced ghettoization of the street vendors. When I was a kid (mid 60s/early 70s) the place was a lot less regimented and there were street vendors everywhere. There was much greater variety of food (and hygiene). Cleaning that up homogenized things — which I want to believe was an accidental side effect, though one can never be sure.
- gumby 4y agoPalo Alto used to have a funky food court where the downtown Apple store now stands. It had been a supermarket but converted sometime in the 70s. It lasted into the late 80s. Apart from nostalgia, it’s where Debbi Fields started “Mrs Fields cookies”. Yes, another Palo Alto startup from the 70s.