Googlicious Work Perks
Do you take care of your employees? Do you really?
Imagine a scrumptious gourmet lunch. Imagine a succulent soup steaming with slices of free-range organic beef skirt steak and hand-made yam noodles offered up alongside more than 30 other items, all sprung from ingredients sourced from within 150 miles. And it?s true. It?s all free of charge.
A dream? Not at Café 150. Not at any one of Google?s thirteen cafeterias. The Internet?s most savory search engine serves its staff three healthy meals five days a week cum gratis.
?Taking care of their employees has always been major priority for Google. The food service program is just one of many ways Google exhibits its concern for the employees? well being,? Executive Chef Josef Desimone said.
And Google leads the ranks of an increasing number of corporate cafeterias cooking more than just the standard artery-clogging grease-laden fair. These corporate cafeterias are more than just stacking dot.com extravagances on their employees.
They serve up gourmet meals with a side of competitive advantage.
?When a company looks after their employees the way Google does it gives them the competitive edge,? Desimone said.
The added amenity helps attract and retain top talent. What?s more, providing a handy and tasty food supply saves employees? time and thwarts campus wide brain drains.
Furthermore, lunches and dinners prove an effective tool for building business relationships. Eating meals with coworkers ignites the super team spark. Inviting clients to dine at headquarters is like inviting friends to dine at home. It?s sure to fire up the relationship.
?The cafes are a great venue for different teams to meet and get to know one other and exchange ideas. Google is built on innovation stemming from a free flow of ideas, and the cafés play a key role in that,? the five-year Google veteran said.
?Google cafés allow us to truly play host to our clients and guests. We can give them a more Googley experience in one of our cafes than if we hosted them off-site.?
Moreover, the healthy food ensures the employees receive the proper fuel. Google?s elite talent needs elite brain fuel to function at high octane. The properly-proportioned and karmicly-crammed health food energizes employees rather than sending them spiraling into a saturated fat overload. It keeps them industrious at work rather than sick at home. It clears the thought process rather than muddling it.
Overseeing three Google cafes in Mountain View and three in the United Kingdom, Desimone?s goals are crystal clear. He wants to take the search engine?s food values to the global stage. He wants to awaken the corporate world to local, organic, free-range, cage-free, steroid-free, nitrate-free, no trans-fat, healthy cooking methods. The question becomes: how many corporate cafeterias will catch on? And how will you satisfy your employees?