Facebook's New Office Not Allowed to Offer Free Food
One city attempts to convince its future employees to actually go out for lunch.
Image: iStock
Raise your hand if you’ve thought about trying to work for Facebook, just so you could get at that free cafeteria. We here at Genius Kitchen won’t self-incriminate (we know the bosses are reading…), but we have definitely heard good things.
Too bad, then, for employees slated to work at Facebook’s newest digs in the WeWork office complex in Mountain View, California, who won’t be receiving that perk thanks to a requirement from the city government.
The rule, which only applies to the “Village” development—which features apartments, a gym, a hotel and a “luxury” movie theater—was actually laid down in 2014, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Why? Well, free food in the office means you never actually have to leave. And when employees never have to leave for lunch, the local economy—particularly its restaurants, cafés and grocery stores—sees no benefit.
So in an effort to spread the wealth around, the city told Facebook that it could not regularly subsidize its’ employees’ in-house meals by more than 50 percent. If employees want to eat their lunch at local restaurants, Facebook is free to pay for the whole enchilada (both figuratively and literally, depending on the menu of the day).
Protecting local businesses while simultaneously forcing techies to come back and join us in the real world? Well played, Mountain View, well played.
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