By Elaine Quayle
Marissa Mayer, Google alum and new CEO of Yahoo!, has the Internet world in a frenzy after she uttered these two words at her first Friday all-company meeting—“free food”!
Reports say that Mayer has initiated free food at Yahoo!’s “URL Cafes” at its two campuses, liberating employees from paying over $3 for an egg sandwich and $5 for a chicken panini.
Business Insider is reporting that the subsidized snacks and meals could cost the company around $20 million per year, based on what Google currently spends and even more if it expands the free food perk to its facilities in Santa Monica and New York City.
But, says Business Insider, the move could help Yahoo! attract the type of employees Facebook and Google attract—techies who are too busy innovating to brown-bag it.
If Yahoo! wants to stay in culinary competition with Google, the grub has got to be good. A past HRSBT article reported on the food at Google’s in-house cafes, where former chef Charlie Ayers described how he used raw, organic, and fermented (!) “brainfoods” to make delicious “kick-start breakfasts,” power lunches, and light dinners for employees at Google’s Mountain View, California, campus corporate center. The campus boasts 18 food venues—with no ingredient from farther than 150 miles away!
CNET reports Marissa Mayer also announced that she is upgrading employee workstations to make them more “collaborative and cool.” HR better get out that policy about not eating at your desk. (Crumbs in the keyboard are bad, even if they are trés gourmet.)
In case this article didn’t make you hungry, savor these other HRSBT stories on food in the workplace.