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Comment by satsuma | Hacker News Reader

as someone who works in a place a solid few miles from restaurants, and has a break room with a few microwaves/a toaster oven as well as a vending machine with gas station tier food... how common are workplace cafeterias like this? is it just sv megacompanies or is it smaller firms across the country?

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I work for a medium sized company in the commercial insurance space in PA. We have a cafeteria. They do charge for meals, but we have access to unlimited drinks. I think larger companies in general will have a cafeteria of some kind, but free food is very much a perk of software companies on the whole, I do believe.

i don't even mind charging for meals, but not having to spend most of my lunch break driving for easy food would be a huge plus. guess i know what to look for once i graduate.

I've worked in a lot of places with cafeterias in the Bay Area and we still went out to eat a few times a week for variety, a change of pace and to satisfy a desire for some food that was not available or much higher quality than the cafeterias, and since we commuted together from/to restaurants, it was more time spent socializing with coworkers and getting out of the office and getting some sun and fresh air. In my opinion so it might not matter to everyone, it's kind of a waste to live here with this fantastic weather 9-10 months a year and not spend some of that time outdoors, even during the work day.

Every remotely-tech-related company with more than 10 employees in San Francisco will provide free food. Only the large ones (more than 500 employees?) will have an on-site kitchen in the cafeteria with dedicated chefs and cooks.

It's pretty much unheard of. Large companies will frequently have cafeterias and they may be partially subsidized but it's very rare that they would be 0 cost to employees.

Also, the quality of ingredients and the creativity and care in preparation and presentation is significantly better than I've seen elsewhere, although the executive dining room at global HQ for one of the companies I worked for did rival Facebook or Google's typical cafe experience.

I've worked in several places with on-site cafeterias (IBM, a former IBM site, THD, McKesson, Infostrada, Swisscom). None of them were free tho.

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