Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at Facebook and other tech cos | Hacker News Reader

Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at Facebook and other tech cos

businessinsider.com

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Non-amp link: https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-free-cafeteria...

Thanks. Changed from https://amp-businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.b...

Edit: looks like it's a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619658.

From twitter:

SAN FRANCISCANS: my studio costs $2700 and I stepped on human feces & 1 used syringe on my morning commute

CITY: we hear you, action must and will be taken. Scooters are now illegal

SF-ANS: what

CITY: no more delivery robots

SF-ANS: but

CITY: workplace cafeterias are forbidden

https://twitter.com/Altimor/status/1021973421046022145

This can definitely help support local business. But seems unfair to lower-salary employees. As an employee who used to have free lunch and now doesn't, I have felt the financial effects.

Dining out truly can make a big impact on the wallet- $10 dollars per meal (unlikely in Mountain View unless fast food) x 5 meals a week x 48 weeks a year (let's be generous and assume you get that much PTO) = $2,400 annually

Company-provided meals also tend to provide healthy options which can be expensive to purchase outside of work- and tend to contain less sodium and sugar than restaurant foods.

I can see this potentially benefitting the local business of 'Amazon WholeFoods' and Costco as people buy more groceries to bring lunch to work with them and eat at their desks. Eating out every day is expensive.

Everywhere I've ever worked, >90% of people bring their meals to work >90% of the time.

This sounds like another of those special microcosm "problems".

Where have you worked?

I've worked at over 10 companies in my life so far.

I've also done locum work in more than that.

In which country and for which roles certainly in the developed world professional workers don't often bring a packed lunch.

I maybe do it one or two days a month and I am in the minority here.

There's nothing stopping the companies from providing a dine-out per diem if they choose to. They could for example form relationships with local eateries to subsidize those meals either in full or through discounts, which would support the local economy but also provide that benefit to employees. But of course it's cheaper for them if they control the entire operation.

The problem is dine in food (catering etc) is 50% tax deductible, dine out food is 0% deductible but having your own in-house restaurant is 100% deductible. None of these articles mention this issue, plus any meal subsidies would not only not go as far for the employer but the employee would be taxed on them.

I’ve been provided meals at work for the last 12 years and I will certainly factor that in to any salary calculus in the future. Given this only impacts new buildings, this puts future employers/business at a disadvantage.

And from experience its removal of minor perks that really piss off employees - much more so than not getting a COLA increase

I'm sorry but this is so f*cking stupid.

As a Bay Area resident my priorities are the cost of housing, cleaning our dirty streets and alleviating traffic congestion.

This is an example of progressivism gone awry. Solving the basics is incredibly important. Our quality of life is in decline (in the bay area) and this is the best our politicians can do?

I'm enraged.

Your municipality does not have the legal or financial mechanisms to solve homelessness, housing, and traffic congestion. They are all natural consequences of economic and political decisions made higher up the food chain.

Yet they keep raising taxes?

Sum that point of view across an entire population and we have the problems we have today.

Your perspective bores me.

What baffles me is the perspective that: "Because <city> can't fix these problems, everything that <city> does is stupid and useless."

The city is responsible for the housing development. Not all of it but a lot of it. Same for homeless: the city can decide to address the problem by investing on affordable housing and assistance programs

Also get your data: if you don’t have free meal, you bring from home. This is what the vast majority does. And at the end of the day, this is a matter of freedom: if company X decides to offers free meal, what’s the problem? It creates jobs and attract people! Is this the country of freedom or this place incompetent administration wants to control what companies and people should do?

No the vast majority of workers targeted by this do not - even in developing countries like India "tiffin wallas" bring food to office workers.

Truth be told, housing issues are very often local: zoning that prevents housing from being built.

Exhibit A: https://shift.newco.co/letter-of-resignation-from-the-palo-a...

I find it curious that you attribute it to "progressivism"

- I stepped in dog shit

- F@kin' liberals

This doesn't have to do anything with progressivism, unless you just use it as umbrella term for everything you don't like.

This might be a great idea in theory, but terrible execution. By having this only apply prospectively, it makes every new business have to compete with businesses that can offer free meals on campus.

I think it's a terrible idea in theory. In practice it probably won't be as bad as companies find loopholes and exceptions. (For example, is having food delivered a cafeteria?)

Still, companies should be able to decide what they want to offer their workers.

This seems silly. My company doesn't pay for food (chicago), we're right next to tons of options, but food is expensive. Most of us bring lunch from home. We live in the burbs and commute in. I don't see why workers would pay to eat out every day instead of bringing lunch. Maybe it's a SF thing that folks would be willing to waste that much money every day?

What's stopping companies from charging a cent per meal?

This is a good question. What stops companies from asking $100 per meal, and charge it on an employee account then reimburse the same amount every month to clear any tab? The free meals are taxable income anyway.

The ban on "company cafeterias" cannot possibly work, they will be simply replaced by separated business entities that happen to share the same building and have a financial arrangement like the one described. Pretty soon you will go full retard trying to stop this.

Tax mate its all about the $

Does this seem a little like bit of gov't overreach? They're saying a business can't provide food to their employees?

Am I missing something?

TFA states: "That's because the city prohibits companies from fully subsidizing meals in the Village,"

Yeah its pretty crazy. I expect the city to get sued over it.

Or the companies bank role a motion to remove cafeterias from all state facilities.

This strikes me as an illegal regulation.

This was a contractual agreement, that Facebook agreed to, in exchange for allowing the office to be built.

You can't just put any arbitrary restriction in a contract that you feel like, particularly not when the party imposing the restriction has the coercive power of government or quasi-governmental entities on its side.

The classic example of this is the old-school homeowner's association covenant that forbade selling your house to people of a certain race.

Race is a federally protected class, having an in-office cafeteria is not.

Just because some contracts are illegal does not make this one illegal. It may be over-reach as a bylaw, but almost certainly not as a contract.

Protected classes are just one of many examples. There are many others.

Search for "mortmain" for one that's been around in English common law since the Middle Ages. Then search for "takings clause" for one that's been around since the U.S. Constitution was enacted.

If the government forbids them from starting a cafeteria in a space where that was formerly allowed, that is a "taking". The government may (or may not, depending on the court) be able to do this, but if they do they are required to pay the landowner for the lost value.

Certainly sounds very strange the government has the right to tax it as a benefit in kind - but I am sure that would be subject of a lot of litigation.

IT also could be argued to be a forced breach of contract as custom and practice is …

You are missing something.

This restriction was made, in exchange for letting the office be built.

They could have asked the Zuckerberg to do the chicken dance, for 10 minutes, in exchange for letting the office be built, if they wanted to.

Ah. So the headline is misrepresenting what's going on. These people signed contracts stating they are ok with these restrictions to allow the offices to be built.

I live about 10 minutes from this location, and often frequent the restaurants there. It's smack dab in a high-traffic area (San Antonio+El Camino) and judging from the crowds, I can assure you that they get plenty of business already from the local community, even without Facebook.

That said, I would still have no problem if it was the landlord (WeWork) making this restriction, instead of the MTV government. This is a private business-to-business matter, and shouldn't be the domain of government.

They could offer meal tickets similar to Vivint: https://savvorysoles.wordpress.com/2016/04/02/vivint-food-ti...

It's a free meal at the office, but if you want to go out they made deals with most of the local restaurants where it gives the employee $5 off

The editorialized title submitted by the OP is incorrect (and probably in bad faith). Free food is banned at one complex in MTV called the village ("That's because the city prohibits companies from fully subsidizing meals in the Village,"), not all over mountain view.

What stops them from paying a “mtv location bonus” of $30~ish dollars a month and charging a dollar a meal?

Edit: it sounds like this is actually a rider on some kind of zoning exception being made for a new development called the Village? Article isn’t terribly clear here

As long as they have them I would hope they begin to pay a livable wage to the people they employ at them

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17612190

Besides, it is also healthy to really get out of the office for an hour or two.

You can do that and have access to a company cafeteria…

Maybe I would rather eat in and leave early to go exercise or kayak in nature?

It's also healthy to spend an extra hour a day with your friends and family after work.

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