
San Francisco Officials to Tech Workers: Buy Your Lunch - sciurus
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/technology/san-francisco-tech-free-lunch.html
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619658)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17621174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17621174)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17613614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17613614)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611770)

~~~
sciurus
Sorry! I'd missed the previous discussion on businessinsider.

------
seibelj
SF should ban private cars, because it deprives public and commercial
transportation of customers.

SF should ban owning your own apartment, because it deprives landlords of
rent.

SF should ban e-commerce purchases, because it deprives local retail stores of
sales.

SF should ban cleaning your own home, because cleaning companies need more
business.

~~~
gedy
The irony is San Francisco is considered a 'liberal' city, but "ban this, ban
that" attitude is quite conservative/reactionary and not liberal at all

~~~
wskinner
San Francisco liberals are not liberal in the sense of promoting liberty.
"Leftist" would be more accurate. In fact in America, neither the mainstream
left nor the mainstream right is particularly liberal: both want things to
stay more or less the same and are afraid of change, both are conservative in
that sense.

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tolmasky
So, two things:

1\. This proposal is for all _new_ offices, which as usual, creates an amazing
unfair advantage to established companies. The old companies will have an old
office that can offer the perk of free lunch, whereas new companies cannot.

2\. I have yet to go into some random restaurant and not have to wait an
absurd amount of time in line. This city constantly feels like it does not
have nearly enough restaurant or activity capacity, everything is just
constantly crowded, all the time. So now I guess we will exacerbate that
artificially? Lunch times will take 1.5x as long without any actual enjoyment
from the extra time since it will just be spent waiting around in line for
(probably) unhealthy food.

~~~
misja111
1\. Why is it such an 'amazing unfair advantage' to be able to offer 'free'
lunch to your employees? Because the lunch is not really free, it is paid
indirectly from the salary of the employee; new companies can simply offer
more salary instead.

2\. Can't companies simply order lunch for their employees? Or pay a third
party to serve lunches for their employees in a company canteen?

~~~
pakitan
1\. Free lunch may not be free but while it may cost $X for the company to
offer that lunch and while they may deduct that $X from my salary, the value
of that lunch to me is not $X but, say, 10 x $X because it saves me time going
to and searching for places to eat, waiting in line, waiting for meal to be
prepared, paying more per meal, including the tip...etc

2\. Sure, they can. For example, Google will hire "Totally Unrelated To
Google, Catering Inc".

------
wskinner
This "solution" seems like a combination of regulatory capture by local
restaurants that want to avoid competing, and the usual SF Supervisor
cravenness / refusal to deal with the root cause of the issue. The restaurants
mentioned in the article (Udon place under 1455 Market and The Market) are
both expensive and mediocre, which is no recipe for success. Instead of
attracting customers through serving a better product, they are trying to
eliminate competition.

Around my office in SoMa by Montgomery, there are numerous thriving lunch
places. The Bird, an affordable fried chicken sandwich spot, has 40 people
lined up outside every weekday, because it is delicious, cheap, and fast.
There are plenty of other examples.

The quantity of open air drug use, sales, and other low-level criminality
around Civic Center is shocking - it's not an area where you want to spend
more time than absolutely necessary. The same group of heroin & crack dealers
do business at the top of the BART steps every single day, and the police do
nothing about it. The city needs to deal with that first. Perhaps they can
spend some of the tremendous tax revenues coming from tech companies, tech
workers, and local restaurants on solving that issue.

~~~
chrischen
More people exposed to open air drug use and crappy restaurants puts more
pressure on there being good restaurants and an end to open air drug use.

~~~
wskinner
At the risk of being glib, how? You do not raise standards by reducing
competition.

~~~
chrischen
You’re not reducing competition, you’re increasing profit margins and supply
of customers. The market incentivizes more competition to reduce profit
margins.

------
natvert
The irony is that while the Bay area is screaming for globalization and free
trade, against rising nationalistic trends, city-level protectionism is the
norm now and only expanding.

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Talyen42
> Two San Francisco supervisors introduced an ordinance last week that would
> forbid employee cafeterias in new corporate construction.

Yeah, we could use some more traffic and pollution from everyone driving 10
miles for lunch.

As a progressive liberal, california democrats confuse me all the time.

~~~
jjulius
Now I'm not defending SF officials here, but c'mon. This is San Francisco
we're talking about - there are restaurants aplenty within walking distance of
most tech offices.

~~~
dntrkv
True, but Mountain View implemented the same ban for Facebook.

~~~
what_ever
Again, the Mountain View ban is for a one particular location which has lot of
restaurants in the complex. Search for The Village, Mountain View. There are a
lot of things wrong with these bans but having to drive to restaurants in not
one of them.

(no way in favor of the ban, I like my free lunch very much)

------
ravenstine
Next Headline: "SF Residents Frustrated with Traffic From Big Tech Lunch
Outings"

Subsequent Headline: "San Francisco Officials Require Tech Companies to Use
Postmates"

At some point, San Francisco needs to accept what it's allowed itself to
become. I've no affinity for tech companies or Silicon Valley, but if it
wasn't for the wealth tech companies, nobody would want to go to San Francisco
and it'd be a wasteland. I've never seen more feces or smelled more piss in a
single area in any other city. If tech moved out, we'd be hearing about
complaints about how "if only big tech invested in poor SF neighborhoods."

~~~
dmode
You mean SF wouldn't be an iconic West Coast City for 100 years if tech moved
out ?

~~~
ravenstine
It'd still be iconic and garner tourism, but in an economic sense, it'd be a
shadow of its 20th century self. Nearby cities like Oakland would be even
worse off as a result. Housing would be much cheaper, but the city wouldn't be
as bustling or generating that much wealth.

Again, I'm not defending tech companies, but San Francisco seems to lack a ton
of foresight into the potential side effects of its decisions; its actions
seem mostly reactive rather than proactive.

------
jedberg
This won't even solve the problem they're trying to solve. These companies
will just order catered lunches. So now you'll have extra traffic in the
morning for the extra food deliveries, and the tech workers still won't go
outside.

~~~
kevingadd
The anecdotal example of a local restaurant seeing a big uptick in business on
the day a cafeteria is closed seems to suggest you might be wrong!

Every workplace I've had in SV where we had catered lunches, people were
pretty likely to walk a few blocks for a meal instead. It wasn't like working
at a place with a cafeteria since you were being offered a choice of 1-2
catered items instead of a huge cafeteria menu.

~~~
thatswrong0
Why should we prefer that we support people who work at restaurants vs people
who work at tech company cafeterias?

That’s what this legislation is effectively doing.

The biggest issue here is the cost it takes to run a business like a
restaurant in this city. It’s too damn high. Even right near Salesforce in
Soma there is not really that great of a selection of food.. I wouldn’t blame
tech for that. I would blame the city and it’s awful regressive anti-housing
legislation that has driven up the costs of everything to near unsustainable
levels.

Which is exactly the kind of bullshit that Aaron Peskin supports. Hes
literally causing a problem, then trying to blame someone else for dealing
with the fallout of that problem. Truly a terrible politician for most of the
residents of this city.

~~~
cjhopman
> Why should we prefer that we support people who work at restaurants vs
> people who work at tech company cafeterias?

Because restaurants bring a lot of value to the city and area itself. Vibrant
restaurant scenes are a key component of a city's atmosphere and an area's
walkability.

~~~
thatswrong0
Then the city should make it cheaper to own and operate restaurants and make
the city less shitty to walk around in by cleaning up its streets of shit and
syringes. A lot of these areas that have tech cafeterias are just plain awful
to walk around in.

You can’t create a vibrant restaurant scene in these areas just by attempting
to force people to eat lunch out at overpriced restaurants that aren’t even
open on weekends

------
petercooper
_" Two San Francisco supervisors introduced an ordinance last week that would
forbid employee cafeterias in new corporate construction."_

In all the tech companies I've visited in the Bay Area (all <1000 employees,
not the big campuses) they've only ever had kitchen areas and not cafeterias
anyway. You can't ban kitchens or refrigerators, surely, so maybe larger
campuses being built could just have more small kitchens local to the employee
areas?

Also, if their goal is what they claim, why not just use the tax code by
disallowing deductions for food and snacks? That'd stop many companies
subsidizing lunch overnight.

~~~
saagarjha
> In all the tech companies I've visited in the Bay Area (all <1000 employees,
> not the big campuses) they've only ever had kitchen areas and not cafeterias
> anyway.

There's no point having a cafeteria (or even space to spare for it!) if it
will only serve a couple hundred people.

------
a-wu
> Open drug use is still common on the streets around Twitter’s headquarters.

This should be the first priority. If I can't get food from a cafeteria and
this is the environment surrounding my office, then I'm just packing my lunch,
which defeats the purpose of the ordinance.

~~~
kevingadd
It's a little naive to suggest that techies are all going to make lunches at
home and bring them to work because of some needles on the street. Many
techies don't even cook on a regular basis when they're at home.

~~~
amyjess
Bringing food from home doesn't have to mean cooking.

Just buy some pre-cooked packaged food from the supermarket and bring that
into the office.

(and specifically from the supermarket in whatever suburb you live in, not one
that's in SF)

~~~
waterhouse
Or mail-order things like these:

[https://www.mealsquares.com/](https://www.mealsquares.com/)

[https://soylent.com/](https://soylent.com/)

I wonder if this ordinance will cause an uptick in their business.

------
ian_d
I could really see something like France's "tickets restos" / meal voucher
system benefitting everyone. Fitting for smaller companies who want to provide
a perk w/out an on-site cafeteria, puts some money into the local economy, a
little tax relief for employees who are normally buying food for lunch...

------
amyjess
I'd love it if tech workers, as a protest, would use Uber Eats or Grubhub or
Doordash to start buying food from national chain restaurants and having them
delivered to the office _en masse_.

"OK, sure, we're buying our own food, but we're sending cars all over the
roads at peak lunch hour, we're only buying food from large corporations that
are headquartered out of state, and we're paying paying other tech companies
to deliver. Local restaurants won't get a dime."

~~~
saagarjha
Uber and Doordash are both headquartered in San Francisco, are they not?

------
thevardanian
So is San Francisco actively trying to kill their golden goose?

~~~
beatpanda
Well the "Golden Goose" has been doing its best to kill San Francisco, so,

------
GreaterFool
I saw an article about this where the author lamented that "SF has plenty of
Michelin-star restaurants". Yeah, that's what I want for lunch, fancy
restaurant food.

The last thing I'd want is to waste time going to restaurants, day after day.
That's what, 30-40 min wasted every day? I could be spending that in the gym!
I work with computers all day, every minute of exercise is precious.

It's cool to go out with coworkers and socialize sometimes, maybe once a week,
but other than that I just want to gobble down the food and be done with it.

(I don't live in SF or US but I visit every now and then)

------
rotskoff
The rational provided for these measures is very indirect, and, as such, it
almost ensures the interpretation that it is retaliatory. If the concern were
truly "integrating" tech workers into the community, perhaps the city would
move to provide building permits for large urban housing complexes. Employer
owned cafeterias create service industry jobs and are likely more sustainable
than catering (with take-out waste). The goal seems more to punish tech
workers and compromise a significant benefit to their employment.

~~~
kevingadd
It's retaliation, yes, because these workplaces were supposed to bring
benefits for their surrounding neighborhoods (and in some cases got tax
breaks/etc on that basis) but they're actually bubbles that don't enrich the
area very much while contributing to traffic (as employees commute in from far
away).

------
oedmarap
The result of this nitpicking might end up being a bad middle ground in terms
of the scope and efficacy of such a proposed regulation.

The knee-jerk response might be to argue against this based on exactly the
non-blanket nature of such a policy (i.e. it does not apply to all companies
with in-house cafeterias, tech or not, subsidized or not).

The more practical option that takes advantage of the same sliver of
regulation is for a few high paid workers to simply incorporate their own
eatery or buy out a midsized one and serve X tech company directly for a good
rate. Business as usual, as it were.

This second option may seem malevolent but it doesn't skirt any existing
business laws, and once they fine tune their selling points (menu, proximity
to company, delivery, perks, billing, credit, etc) it wouldn't be infeasible
for them to gain the full on contract with those edges over the existing
mom+pop competition.

In a grand backfire someone then gets into a multi-branch cafeteria/catering
business that just happens to have big tech as their only clients, etc.

------
alexhutcheson
At all the offices I've been to without cafeterias, most people end up just
bringing lunch and eating at their desk on most days. The hassle and cost of
going out for food isn't worth doing everyday, and it's hard to find healthy
options other than salad. Because of this, the actual impact of this for local
restaurants is probably ~20% of what the naive estimate would be.

------
swamp40
There are dozens of solutions to this. City officials are never going to
outsmart Google, et al.

My favorite, courtesy of Heinlein:

 _On each side of the door was a huge brass bowl — filled with money. More
than filled — Federation notes of various denominations spilled out on the
floor. He was staring at this when Patricia returned. “Here 's your drink,
Brother Ben. Grow close in Happiness.” “Uh, thanks.” His eyes returned to the
money. She followed his glance. “I'm a sloppy housekeeper, Ben. Michael makes
it so easy, cleaning and such, that I forget.” She retrieved the money,
stuffed it into the less crowded bowl. “Patty, why in the world?” “Oh. We keep
it here because this door leads to the street. If one of us is leaving the
Nest — and I do, myself, almost every day for grocery shopping — we may need
money. We keep it where you won't forget to take some.” “Just grab a handful
and go?” “Why, yes, dear. Oh, I see what you mean. There is never anyone here
but us.”_

------
SamReidHughes
These people want workers to spend more time in line and less time with their
family.

~~~
klez
Sorry, I think I'm missing something: did those employees bring family to the
company cafeteria to eat with them?

~~~
SamReidHughes
They can finish lunch quicker and leave work earlier.

~~~
klez
Sorry, I'm coming from the perspective that here in Italy you normally have
one hour for lunch between 1 PM and 2 PM anyway.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Here in the USA there is no set time for lunch. I've found taking lunch in the
office as opposed to spending extra time traveling to a restaurant and back
lets me recharge in less time.

------
joeblau
I worked at Amazon in FiDi for almost 2 years and we never had free lunch. It
was all part of the "Frugality" core value but I never felt like it was that
bad. My current job has lunch onsite and it is better from a productivity
standpoint. I probably get 30 minutes to 1 hour more working in because our
team doesn't have to do mental gymnastics of picking a restaurant and
commuting there and back, but sometimes that's fun. That being said, there are
other things San Francisco officials should prioritize over this.

------
dsfyu404ed
A large amount of company provided free food is catered from local
restaurants. I suspect this will cause a decrease in net business because many
people will just bring their own lunch instead of eating the free food that
the company paid for.

For most food-service workers, working in a cafeteria preparing food is
generally much better than doing the same job in a restaurant.

Other than virtue signaling about how much they love local business and small
business (this happens on both sides of the isle) what does this accomplish?

------
miguelrochefort
What makes these people think this is a good idea?

------
ironjunkie
This is a prime example of how lobbying will favor a very visible small group
of people and slightly disadvantage everyone else.

In the end, when you calculate the economic value of the advantage to the
restaurant and the economic loss for everyone else (worker's time, benefit to
the company, etc etc), this is a net loss in the system.

------
CaliforniaKarl
An additional related article, from today:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed-
em...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed-employee-
cafeteria-ban-not-to-13121402.php)

------
tranchms
And when employees bring their lunch to work?

Will they ban bagged lunches?

This is defying logic.

I want to know what restaurants are paying off what politicians.

Watch the next ban be on home kitchens- ha!

The bigger issue politicians should be addressing is an adequate housing
supply.

High rent depletes any surplus income that otherwise would be spent eating out
at restaurants.

------
emiliobumachar
Petition to ban kitchens from the houses of San Francisco Supervisors:

[https://www.change.org/p/san-francisco-government-ban-
kitche...](https://www.change.org/p/san-francisco-government-ban-kitchens-
from-the-houses-of-san-francisco-supervisors)

Context:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/30/links-7-18-url-
mountain...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/30/links-7-18-url-mountains/)

"Two San Francisco supervisors move to ban free workplace cafeterias,
obviously directed at tech firms. They argue free cafeterias are denying
business to local restaurants and (as per Supervisor Peskin) “depriving
[techies] the pleasure of mingling with the rest of The City”, which is
impossible for me to read in anything other than a cloying sarcastic bully
voice. @theunitofcaring has a typically thoughtful and compassionate take on
this. I am less thoughtful and compassionate and my take is wanting to start a
petition to ban San Francisco City Supervisors from having kitchens in their
house. It’s literally stealing from the restaurant industry! [EDIT: Commenter
“Jeltz” has made the petition]."

------
dbg31415
Taxing these workers isn’t enough?! Now CA wants to mandate where they eat?
Hard pass.

------
drivingmenuts
With some restaurants apparently giving up on waitstaff, I guess people can
now put more work in their lunch hour serving themselves.

I really do hope those serverless restaurants are cheaper, because otherwise,
what’s the point?

------
gradys
People who have more experience navigating SF politics than I do:

What's the most effective thing readers of this thread can do to make sure
this doesn't pass?

~~~
tmh79
call your supervisor and tell them to vote no, I did it, if you don't know who
your supervisor is, look here to find your district:

[http://www.sfmoderates.org/district-
maps/](http://www.sfmoderates.org/district-maps/)

then google search for "district N supervisor san francisco" and they will
have contact info

------
pm24601
The tech companies had no problem taking the tax breaks. Twitter pitched the
benefits to SF as revitalizing an area of the city. Twitter, et. al. didn't
deliver on their end of the deal.

I see this as a renegotiation of the deal when one party (SF) has realized
that they are getting shafted.

Twitter, Uber, etc can always leave if they have a problem.

Everyone else that works in SF has to pay for their lunch on lower salaries.
If the lunch cost is so unreasonable - bring a microwaveable meal or leftovers
from last night.

I really don't get why anyone is acting like this is so horrible.

~~~
PSZD
Because (as someone entirely uninvolved) it looks like an absurd bit of
overreach, something akin to mandating that locally-sourced toilet paper be
used at all businesses in the city.

Go right ahead, but don't mind a bit of sensible chuckling elsewhere in the
country.

~~~
pm24601
Just bring a lunch from home! problem solved.

~~~
thatswrong0
Stop telling people how to eat lunch.

------
icowcow
I enjoy the example of Kagawa-ya Udon. I've been there and it has nothing to
do with free food. Their udon is just not that great.

------
skybrian
This protects restaurant owners and some cashier jobs. Maybe cooks and other
workers would be better off working for tech companies?

------
jonathanberger
There are more important priorities for the SF Supervisors’ time and the law
could cause more harm than good (unintended consequences).

More important priorities would be the ones mentioned in the article: the
conditions of the street.

Possible unintended consequences: tech company cafeteria workers suffer,
people bring food from home, tech companies choose to locate elsewhere, among
many others.

------
sbjs
> “These tech companies have decided to leave their suburban campuses because
> their employees want to be in the city, and yet the irony is, they come to
> the city and are creating isolated, walled-off campuses,” said Aaron Peskin,
> a city supervisor who is co-sponsoring the bill with Ahsha Safaí. “This is
> not against these folks, it’s for them. It’s to integrate them into the
> community.”

So, app developers face the difficulty of having high wages but higher costs,
and in every single direction, greedy people are trying to get every dime out
of them. I mean $3,258 for 1-bedroom apartments is outrageous! And now, while
they're trying to cut some of the few costs they have control over (food), the
local government is _openly and brazenly_ trying to force them to spend _more_
money on local lunch shops? Didn't we just read a few months ago about a high
profile developer who lives in his car because he can't afford rent?
Capitalism with rules that favor greed is pure evil. I'm all for looking for
ways to monetize, but you're literally stealing from people living out of
their cars.

------
kyleblarson
Virtue signaling on non issues is much easier than dealing with the sea of
shit and needles on the sidewalks.

------
draw_down
Who would benefit from this?

~~~
goobynight
Only the restaurant owners that believe they have earned business by simply
opening shop in the area.

Hopefully companies find a workaround or people start packing though.

------
jadedhacker
Hahaha, the small town capitalists are fighting the international monopolists
and the workers everywhere lose.

------
sadamznintern
I'm of two minds on this.

1) There's no obligation for anybody to integrate with the community around
them and forcing them to is absurd, especially with the bigger problems San
Francisco faces

2) I fucking hate the people that get free food in SF because they think
they're better than me and I would absolutely love to see them suffer in the
most petty ways possible. I think this hits the optimal level of annoying.

~~~
saagarjha
> because they think they're better than me and I would absolutely love to see
> them suffer in the most petty ways possible

Why do you hate them so much? They work at a company that provides them a free
perk. There's nothing here about thinking they're better than you.

~~~
sadamznintern
> There's nothing here about thinking they're better than you.

I can guarantee that most people at Facebook, Google, etc. look down on people
with my pedigree and employer.

~~~
saagarjha
I think you're projecting–unless you job is doing something unethical?

~~~
sadamznintern
Well no.

But I do make 80% or less of what they make out of school.

