“You should come to the LinkedIn cafeteria tonight, it has a starred chef!”
That’s the type of sentence we could start hearing more often.
The tech industry’s appetite for good food and its wealth of discretionary income has been a major driving force in the past few years in invigorating the restaurant scene in Silicon Valley.
Tech companies employ hundreds of people who work all day on these giant sites. This means an organisation, especially concerning the feeding of all that small world.
The aim is to teach the techies to appreciate food as nourishment, rather than mere sustenance, and equal in quality the gastronomic restaurants, minus the style. For instance, baker Laurie Moran served the same chocolate pie as the one served at the Bernardin, a 3 star Michelin restaurant in New York in where he worked from 2012 to 2014.
For top chiefs it’s a good deal to have a less stressful job, with no rush hours and a full weekend, they can easily balance their careers and private lives. However, the main advantage is, not surprisingly, the increase in wages. While in a “classic” restaurant you’re ought to earn around $18 per hour, chefs can earn between $25 to $30 an hour at tech companies which are also head-hunting chefs from great restaurants.
Money is always the crux of the matter. If big firms want their employees to have attractive working conditions, offering them the possibility to eat healthy and high-quality food, this can be a trick to keep them longer at work. Obviously, if you are about to leave and go home but you see an appetizing dish on the menu for tonight, you’ll certainly change your mind and stay the extra hour. You’ll have to work longer, as it evidently happens, but this time you’ll feel more part of that choice, settling it through better terms.
Beyond having good meals served, it is quite clever and innovative to offer that range of services to your employees. L’et’s bet it will fit both employees and company interests. A piece of cake.
