

Accidental Startup Office Manager: Ordering Food - dmor
http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2012/11/accidental-startup-office-manager-ordering-food/

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codex
Ignoring the fact that this post contains refer.ly links and is really just
SEO bait produced by the refer.ly CEO, I find that carbs and caffeine do not
make me more productive at work. I used to think they did, but in reality they
only borrowed productivity from the future which must be paid back, with
interest, making them a net loss.

~~~
rhizome
I worked at a startup a year ago that had cases of Velveeta mac & cheese. I
have to think it was a joke, but they were stored in a way suggestive of human
consumption.

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bryanh
I like this. You never see Techcrunch or any other tech blogs covering some of
the maddeningly mundane aspects of a startup life (for good reason: its
boring). From the outside, a startup seems like all code and growth and
glamour, but the "CEO is the janitor" motif is nothing if not true-to-life.

More mundane things I'd like to hear about: HR, accounting, customer support
or general management. Those end up being real pains for startups, and we
never know it until we experience it.

~~~
rdl
Ugh. HR (even just payroll, but also various disclosures, insurances, etc.),
lawyers, physically printing and getting people to sign large numbers of
forms, etc. all are annoying and have very little room for positive
differentiation.

Picking out an office and furnishing it also sucks, but at least you might do
particularly well on it.

~~~
GuiA
We outsourced our HR, and although I don't know all the gritty details because
my CEO cofounder is taking care of it, I know he likes it a lot.

Although one quibble I had with it was that they gave us a standard policy
handbook to have signed by employees which was ridiculous and out of touch
with the realities of tech startup (ie employees shouldn't use their work
computer to send personal emails, etc). We sent it back to them and they were
accommodating.

(Algentis is the one we're using)

~~~
thisone
I'd rather outsourced HR than no HR. When the people you have a grievance
against are the people you need to file grievances with, you're better off
just leaving.

(I'm talking things like having a raise agreed in writing, and then getting
paid significantly less. And, when questioned about it, the owners saying
"oops, yeah, should have told you, we decided we can't pay you that")

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w1ntermute
Is anybody else bothered by selection of products listed in the blog post (I
didn't check the full list since I'm on my phone)? How about some fruits? You
can eat healthy and support the local community at the same time. And Red
Bull, even though it's sugar free, isn't something I'd drink on a regular
basis. Tea is a nice alternative.

~~~
eshvk
I dunno. I would categorize myself a health nut (powerlifting, leangains etc)
but I do think that junk foods (cookies, icecream and redbull) should not be
banned from a tech office kitchen. I may not partake of them but some people
do prefer them and the idea should be to cater to as many preferences as
possible within reason. I find it odd that some people have this fixation that
their personal attitudes towards eating healthy should be enforced for every
one in the office. I appreciate their efforts to be healthy but if someone
wants their sugar fix and get back to work without being distracted, they
should be free to do so.

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ciupicri
Speaking of leangains, doesn't that system offer the option of not eating at
all at work? Though to be honest, not eating can be hard if you're under
stress.

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eshvk
That is basically what I do. I drink a protein shake around 2 PM. Ideally,
this is all I eat till I go home and then pack on a big dinner. Having said
that, practically there are times when you eat out (Team lunches, parties at
work etc). It takes some getting used to and I was always the kind who used to
skip breakfast so it works well for me.

I completely agree with the not eating under stress being hard part. It is
doubly annoying when someone else's perspective on "Healthy food" is forced
upon you at these times.

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usea
At our office (we have 8 employees, 7 are salaried and 6 are engineers) we
have a sort of partnership with a sister company who is larger and more
mature. We piggyback off some of their resources to help us manage things like
payroll, insurance, HR. We do spend far more time than we'd like on things
like office supplies, lunch runs, looking at new office space so we can fit
more employees, etc.

Some of what we do is building one-off or small runs of custom electronics, so
we hired a person from our sister company who was previously emptying trash
cans in their warehouse. At first he did our inventory as well as QA for our
software products. A year later and now he operates our pick-and-place, reflow
oven, milling machine, 3d printer, and tons of other things. People are
capable of a lot if you give them the opportunity and some guidance.

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yashd
If you’re interested in healthier, non-junky snacks, check out Blissmo.
Blissmo offers a monthly subscription service of healthier snacks, for
offices, called the BREAKbox (www.blissmo.com/breakbox).

Examples of snacks include: organic, fair-trade dark chocolate, all-natural
dried mango strips, locally-harvested pistachio nuts, and gluten-free, granola
bars.

Also, Startups dig BREAKbox. Customers include: Twilio, Retargeter, Involver,
indiegogo, Switchcam, Pocket and more.

Disclosure: I’m an intern at blissmo. Feel free to shoot me an email for any
reason - yash {at} blissmo {dot} com.

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chucknelson
As others have mentioned, the foods mentioned don't seem to reflect any deep
thought or consideration of various diets.

I just wanted to point out that she mentions diabetics as one example of
"things to consider", yet the "top 5 foods" are all carbs, except for the
basically nutritionally-void sugar free red bull.

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sprobertson
There probably aren't very many quality foods available on Amazon, and why
post a link to something if you're not getting referrals?

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dmor
I went through the other options, like paleo cookies or beef jerky and the
reality is that healthier stuff you can order online is really expensive. I
don't think it is a startups job to provide full meals or to cater to
everyone's dietary preferences - snacks are exactly that, snacks. Something
convenient to eat when you are busy and between meals. If you can manage to
easily accomodate special requests while getting shopping for stuff done
efficiently that's great, but it is really not the startup's job to make sure
your high fiber gluten free paleo diet is working for you.

Until companies have an actual full time office manager who can worry about
this stuff, it is extremely time consuming to cater to all these preferences
and if people are really invested in being healthy they will take the time to
purchase and bring the foods they want to eat throughout the day. Even once
you have an office manager you have to ask yourself whether spending thousands
a month on a huge variety of foods is a good idea. Usually until a company is
pretty big it just doesn't make sense.

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yummyfajitas
Yep. This is what happens when you do a startup.

My version: about 2 weeks after I quit my job and moved to India, we started
having scheduled water outages from 9AM-whenever on thurs. We also had 6
female employees. So in addition to coding, my job was to show up at 8AM and
fill buckets.

I'm now at a big company (startups fail). One perk of big company life - I
don't even need to think about front end code (unless I want to).

~~~
codewright
Help me with the non-sequitur from buckets to front-end code.

Let me take a guess though:

Things you enjoy: [backend-code]

Things had to do at the startup: [buckets, frontend-code, backend-code]

Things you have to do at a big company: [backend-code]

Thus making the big-company more pleasant because you didn't enjoy frontend
_or_ bucket filling?

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turoczy
Running a accelerator, one thing we've discovered with feeding our startups is
that bringing in food has another beneficial side effect: stress reduction.

We try to cater at least three meals a week for our folks. Because we've seen
the benefits: 1) Makes sure that people are actually stopping to eat. 2)
Lowers the burn rate for the companies. 3) Lowers stressing about "Where are
we going to eat?" 4) And perhaps the most beneficial: It ensures that we're
forcing some actual nutrients into their diets.

Of course the other fringe benefit is the peer mentoring and socializing,
where people actually stop banging on keyboards and take a moment to talk to
one another.

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SG-
I put on 40 pounds in my 3 years at a .com startup between 2000-2003 mostly
because of the free soda machines (and i hadn't switched to diet soda yet) and
free junk food vending machines on each floor. there wasn't any fruit ever. i
think the healthiest food was someone stocked a cupboard with rice crispy
squares on each floor too.

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knes
So this post got downvote/ remove from the frontpage and you repost it ?

Its only a link bait article full of affiliate link from your product?

And finally, the products you are referring to is the best way to getting
everyone fat in the office?

Don't you have any shame in what you are doing?

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venus
Referral links in a blog post are a big turn-off for me. I know that they
don't make the product any more expensive, but I still think they are a bad
incentive.

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Ironballs
I... I don't understand. What's this mentality of offering free non-nutritious
food for all employees, by the bucketload, for free? Why would you snack in
the first place?

Either eat solid, whole meals on assigned lunch breaks, or drink something
that isn't bad for you - tea, coffee come to mind - or why not, water?

In all frankness I find the whole concept of offering free crap for everyone
harmful and eventually counterproductive - I can only imagine what copious
amounts of free sugary soft drinks will do to people after a while.

~~~
eshvk
It is not free. Nothing is free. In fact, when I was negotiating an offer, the
free food for breakfast and lunch was brought up several times. Yes, this is
true even at Google. See <http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/>

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mikeytown2
I do the same thing at my work, but I have an honor system where people can
keep a tab on a notepad. I buy everything at Costco as the prices are about
1/3 less than what you see on amazon. I round up to the nearest quarter to
make life easy for everyone. I have a slightly different selection as well.
Below are some of the hot items not listed on this post: Nature Valley Bar -
Protein (Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate). Individual Kirkland Trail Mix.
Individual Tropicana OJ. Premier Protein Bars. Premier Protein Chocolate
Drink. Lara Bars. Trio Bars. 5-hour energy. Cheese Sticks. Vanilla Whey
Protein.

My go to meal is Quaker Oatmeal mixed with Vanilla Whey Protein. I'll eat that
1-2 times a day. Cost for that combo is $0.75, not bad if you ask me. Just
trying to give people some good ideas here :)

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johnbenwoo
Oatmeal rocks for quick/healthy/inexpensive/tasty. My go-to is quick oats
(from the giant cardboard box) + hot water from a coffeemaker + sliced almonds
+ frozen/dried blueberries + milk

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nvr219
Dried fruit is a must imho.

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socialist_coder
so much high fructose corn syrup

