This is the real point. The idea that somehow the catering business serving startups or the kitchen workers in cafes are somehow less worthy of support than owners of restaurants

To be fair, there are a lot of efficiency gains and economies of scale involved.

Google pays a lot less to provide an employee with a nutritious, healthy meal than the same employee would be paying for a less healthy meal in your typical local restaurant.

So this law will create more local jobs in the short term... except the next Techplex will not be built in MTV, which will lose it far more local jobs than it gained.

No, this is not the real point. Employment isn't an upside, that's the broken window fallacy.

Employees should be allowed to bring food from home to eat at their desks if they want, and that is obviously terrible for jobs in local cafes and restaurants.

Restaurants do have some added benefits over just a catering business though and those are mentioned in the article. Restaurants bring foot traffic to areas that other shops can benefit from where a catering business doesn't.

Those employees don’t contribute to the campaigns of the relevant politicians while local business owners are highly involved.

Suddenly everyone cares about their dear Facebook cafeteria workers?

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-cafeteria-worke...

People cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year each in free lunches are now more likely to comply with the law. This seems like a step in the right direction.

It's a shame that bay area housing prices, which higher paid tech workers already struggle with, are even more of a burden for Facebook cafeteria workers, who make less money than many of those they serve every day. Thankfully, since your year-old article, Facebook cafeteria workers have unionized. I hope it's helped.

Still, it's unlikely that food service and retail workers in these cities are having an easier time making ends meet. The article you linked acknowledged that the cafeteria workers were making well above CA minimum wage - do you think the same can be said for all the restaurant/shop employees in the bay? Is there a reason we should be more concerned about some service industry employees over others?

Do you have a source for your claim that people are cheating on their income taxes to the tune of thousands of dollars a year?

> Still, it's unlikely that food service and retail workers in these cities are having an easier time making ends meet. The article you linked acknowledged that the cafeteria workers were making well above CA minimum wage - do you think the same can be said for all the restaurant/shop employees in the bay?

Hit the nail on the head.

All this concern for a relatively tiny number of tech cafeteria workers who are actually in much better shape than the vast majority of food industry employees. McDonalds pays the absolute minimum to its legions employees, and has to give them booklets that try (and fail) to do the math of how they can survive on their meager income. Meanwhile, bit tech pays their workers much better, but let's pick on them since they're evil!