It's just as easy to hire a chef as it is to hire a catering service.

Google managed to hire their first chef in 1999 and manage them directly, I'm sure they can manage a global team of cooks better than anyone else if they wanted to, because of their specific needs and so many global offices to spread the gains through. It's all just a decision they took.

What they did with Ayer’s was so clearly unsustainable (and disproportionate) it’s a classic story in the business world of giving away the farm.

Anyone doing that at scale is going bankrupt quickly. Which is the point.

Google has infinite money and doesn't have to care about things like that. They can waste money on food just like they waste it hiring 10000 engineers who don't do any work.

Bwahaha. Good luck with that.

Google's first chef Charlie Ayers was hired way back in 1999

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Ayers

And notorious as a bad example of how to hire cooks? They changed shortly afterwards.

They pretty much were giving away the farm, and if they kept that up they’d be bankrupt - not an incredibly valuable company.

> no idea how to manage or hire cooks?

Ah yess, cooking food is like deepwater welding, and an average adult has no idea how to manage the risks involved.

Seriously, how can an adult write something like this?

Have you ever managed a commercial kitchen? Or hired and supervised cooks?

I know people who have, and it is far from an easy or straightforward thing. If you want to stay solvent and out of jail anyway.

Most restaurants go bankrupt within a few years.

I have worked in a ghost kitchen, its not rocket science.

We discussing a canteen for employees, not a commercial restaurant. You don't need marketing, you don't need to turn a profit.