weekly all hands dinner? insane.
Insanely fun. :)
Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#12"Hire a chef". Hmm. I wonder what the average investor might think about that?
They think it's delicious. :)
It's much more affordable than you'd think. Extremely talented employees are precious. They should be treated so.
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#13I believe in team building over lunch, but free food is a terrible attractant and retention item.
People who are intrinsically motivated to do excellent work might be motivated to join due to food, but they really join for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Free food is none of these things. And ultimately you end up attracting people who are after the perks, and may not end up contributing to a passionate environment.
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is something to be said about being able to keep your employees from disappearing from the office for 30-60 minutes for lunch in the middle of the day. Think about it, if you have a chef preparing food in your office, you and your team can work right up until the minute the food is ready, take a 15 second walk and be seated at a meal. When you are done, you walk 15 seconds back to your desk. At the end of the d…
Oh, sure. In our office we achieve the same effect by ordering delivery, though.
The benefits of chef-cooked food (vs. delivery) are more subjective, but I can see situations in which an argument could be made for a net benefit to the startup. If you make an effort to restrict yourself to healthy food (along with other "healthy" lifestyle choices, such as consistent and sufficient sleep), you can realize significant productivity benefits in the types of white collar work that being part of a startup typically entails.
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#15If you were a workplace that had a cook create weight loss food for all 3 meals I would love to work there. It saves me hours of time a day.
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#16I spent 5 years at Googs. Good food in the office is great. It's way better having healthy food than just sushi or pizza delivery all the times.
Also giving your people time to spend alone and step out for lunch or just a walk is great too and I missed that often. You don't just "produce" by sitting at your desk and staring at the screen.
Also making people feel kind of obliged to attend social event on a weekly basis or even more often, isn't that fun. People have their life and family back home and I am sure some of them would like to eat dinner with their loved ones or just hang out with friends.
Time out and alone is as valuable as team spirit I believe...
So is sleeping and relaxing...
S
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#17I believe in team building over lunch, but free food is a terrible attractant and retention item. People who are intrinsically motivated to do excellent work might be motivated to join due to food, but they really join for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Free food is none of these things. And ultimately you end up attracting people who are after the perks, and may not end up contributing to a passionate environment.
Free food helps people focus, as the post says, when you're not figuring out what to eat, mooching out the building then being a bit annoyed that there's a queue and then you're forking over cash, you're not focused or thinking about problems.
You gain purpose when you're sat around a table bonding with teammates and bouncing ideas. The lunchtimes I had as an intern at Google were incredibly valuable to me. They were hours which I didn't consider downtime at all.
I think you're significantly underrating this.
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#18Rule #1 – Eat lunch together around a table. Not sure about this. It is fine to have lunch together twice a week. Do it every day? Unless someone really enjoys talking and being listened. I enjoy discussion with colleagues. I find, though, if more than 4 persons are involved, it is more efficient to be in a formal place or follow a formal procedure. Otherwise, 90% of time tends to be on trivial issues. If lunch toget…
Once or twice a week is completely fine. I work at Thumbtack (and have since the first meal!), and occasionally if I am in right in the middle of something or need a break I'll eat at my desk. It isn't a big deal, and I certainly don't agree that people must eat together everyday.
However, one of the key things our culture is that everybody is always welcome at the table, and there is never any issue with somebody pulling up a chair anywhere and joining any conversation. You certainly don't have to if you aren't in the mood, but you always can. I'm also not a big foodie at all, but the food is really really good, and that helps a lot :)
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#19The food should be part of the company's culture. What most of the US people don't get, is that food is the fuel for the body.
If you eat crap you'll perform not that great. If you eat well, you'll perform a lot better.
You feel more agile mentally and physically. Start to think about food as a key moment of your life.
Re: Food Rules for Startups: Eight Delicious Ways to Build a Better Company
#20 “Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients,
or ingredients you can’t pronounce.”
It looks healthy but the remainder of the product is salt, refined sugar, perhaps a dash of another staple ingredient and if you're lucky and 1% herbs or spices that you can't taste anyway because they were cutting costs.
Quality food will often contain 10-20 fresh ingredients in varying and balanced quantities. A mix of greens from different families, other vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, herbs, spices, etc.
Which will be better for your body:
1. A diet consisting of tomato, potato and salt?
2. A diverse diet that combines dozens of fresh/raw ingredients.