美国国家公共电台 NPR For Some Facebook Employees, Free Food Is Coming To An End

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LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:

There's a certain stereotype¹ of Silicon² Valley tech offices - that they provide endless snacks and meals around the clock.

Well, now there's an effort underway to do away with that legendary³ perk⁴. Menlo Park in California is banning Facebook from offering free food at its newest campus, and San Francisco is considering something similar.

KQED's Tonya Mosley has more.

TONYA MOSLEY, BYLINE⁵: The inside of Facebook in Menlo Park, Calif., is the stuff of lore⁶. This 430,000-square-foot campus offers perks⁷ like an onsite cleaners, a dentist and free food, basically a smorgasbord of anything your heart desires - custom omelets, braised beef, handmade sushi. You really never have to leave the office.

It's what lured⁸ Ben Werner here. He traveled all the way from France to get a tour of Facebook from a friend who works there. He wanted to see for himself all of the perks he has read so much about.

BEN WERNER: I'd like to have those things taken care of - probably also would mean that I'd spend more time at work. But I guess it's a two-way street then that benefits us both.

MOSLEY: But about 8 miles away in Mountain View, Calif., the home of Google - free food, at least at the new Facebook campus, won't be on the menu.

LENNY SIEGEL: We believe these companies are part of our community. A growing number of their employees live in our community. And we want them to be a part of our community.

MOSLEY: Mountain View Mayor Lenny Siegel says, for years, restaurant owners have complained that employees of Google never come out to eat or shop. So when the city learned that Facebook would be opening a new office here in September, the council passed a measure that bars the company from serving free food in its corporate⁹ cafeteria.

Facebook said, no problem. Under the agreement, the social media company can subsidize meals from restaurants open to the public.

But Mayor Siegel acknowledges there are still a few kinks that need to be smoothed out.

SIEGEL: Facebook is a global company, and some of their people work in the middle of the night. And if all the restaurants are closed, I would be open to considering food service in the middle of the night.

MOSLEY: Erika Rasmussen manages an open-air grocery store called the Milk Pail Market next to the new Facebook office. To her, the thought of feeding 2,000 employees who are hungry around the clock is a bit nerve-wracking.

ERIKA RASMUSSEN: We don't want Facebook to overwhelm this area, but we do want Facebook to support this area because we will need their patronage¹⁰ to survive.

MOSLEY: Facebook says it's still working out the details, but some other ideas also include turning the ground floor of this new building into a food court with local restaurants open to the public.

Deepak Rao, a tech employee at a startup in Silicon Valley, says perks aren't the defining reason he and his colleagues do the work they do. But sometimes, he says, when you're working long hours, perks like free food feel like a necessity.

DEEPAK RAO: To go out, drive, or whatever, go eat, come - that could take an hour and a half, which you might not have.

MOSLEY: So for tech companies, it's been worth it to keep employees like Rao at work for as long as they can stay by providing food in-house. These new laws will change what's become a given in Silicon Valley work culture.

The city of San Francisco is also considering a similar measure that would ban cafeterias in all new office buildings, forcing tech employees to venture out and share a bit of the wealth outside of their walls.

For NPR News, I'm Tonya Mosley.