Aug. 1—The dazzling array of food options at the Googleplex campus in Mountain View, Calif. — 25 cafes at last count — is the much-cited example of tech world food perks. And you can peruse the menus at Airbnb and Facebook to get a taste of an equally high bar for not just free food, but worldly food that is designed to delight and fuel employees to work better and harder.
The envy-inducing dishes Facebook's culinary team recently served up include hazelnut peach cheesecake and house-smoked buffalo quail with buttermilk blue cheese. Over at Zynga, employees are spoiled with pickles, yogurt, beef jerky, beer, kombucha and bread — all house made. That's just the tip of the spread prepared by executive chef Mathew DuTrumble and team.
J Sider, founder and CEO of BandPage, a music platform startup in San Francisco, says that when people come for an interview he shows them the BandPage food program and introduces them to corporate chef Callie Waldman. "They walk in the office, which is pretty open, and they can see and smell her foods being made," Sider tells The Salt. "Sometimes she'll put out fresh cookies or granola bars."