The other day, I was reading an article in the SV/SF biz journal titled “The fastest way to an engineer’s heart it through his stomach”. It made me harken back to my summer internship in the Chevron HR department during the summer before starting college. It was 1989 and some IT executive decided in their glorious wisdom to buy new Macs for the HR department. Most of the folks in the HR department had never used a computer let alone an exotic beast like the Mac IIx. My role as file boy quickly expanded to desktop support and wound up consuming the majority of my time: “This is a mouse.”, “No Mr. Smith. The Mac OS does not have a DOS terminal.”

Days were punctuated by the lunchtime trip to the company cafeteria where I’d meet my Dad for lunch. We’d usually have a bowl of soup that tasted like it was straight from the Campbell’s factory. Despite the uninspiring food, meeting Dad was the highlight of my day.

Although I’ve personally never worked professionally (internships don’t count) at a place with a cafeteria, my cafeteria experience at Chevron left a lasting impression of the importance that food can play in defining a company culture. It is great to see the Googles of the world recognize that great food is a means of acquiring and keeping great employees. I’m not so sure all of the goodies that they provide are such a good thing, especially for productivity, but that is a story for another day.

Of course not all companies are Googles and can provide an in-house chef or caterer to prepare meals. So for those of you on real world budgets, I offer the following advice to keeping engineers well fed, happy and the good joojoo flowing.

1. Get a quarterly/biannual/yearly “food” budget - No one likes surprises so let it be known how you intend to spend your budget. $10.00 - $15.00 per person per meal is a good rule of thumb.
2. Be religious about eating together - Wherever the food comes from, make eating together a regular occurrence. I used to try to have lunch catered for weekly team meetings.
3. Cook for your team - That’s right. If you can handle, try cooking for your team occasionally.
4. Potlucks - Engineering teams tend to be pretty diverse so potlucks are a great way for everyone to express a bit of their cultural identity. There is usually a ton of food so be sure to invite other teams.
5. Get a kitchen/BBQ and cook together - It is a long standing goal to install a kitchen in place of work. If that fails, get a Weber and BBQ outside.