How Did Healthy Food Lead to the Success of Google?

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Google forever changed how the human species would access information.

The company has impacted us in more ways than we even realize.

For co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, healthy food has always been a cornerstone of what made Google successful.

The early days of the company always prioritized free food — but specifically healthy food.

When they first moved to their original campus, they made sure that they created a fun, creative, and interactive working experience.

And the centerpiece for what made for an ideal work experience was allowing their employees to have free and abundant healthy food.

"Google Begins With the Stomach"

I have a friend from San Francisco that started working for Google in 2009. She could not stop going on about all the mind-blowing food that was available.

I just would have to sit and listen with envy as I ate my day-old, 7/11 burrito.

Envy is what a lot of Silicon Valley companies felt as they heard more about the famous Google food services.

But this wasn’t just about the owners putting out fun snacks and drinks, and creating a good culture — it was about getting the best out of their employees.

Brin and Page needed to create the ultimate work environment to make sure Google continued to flourish in its early days.

When they first moved to their campus in 2003, they were able to create their perfect work environment from scratch — and healthy food would be at the center of this.

As the company grew, so did a wave of new employees. In the book, “In the Plex” by Steven Levy, we get an inside look at these early days.

During orientation sessions, new employees were told that Google takes its food very seriously.

They were made to understand that Google begins with the stomach.

A human resource executive once said that they’d never seen a company so fixated on food.

But the concept is simple: eat like crap — perform like crap. Eat clean and healthy and have more of a chance to thrive.

Google had a lot on the line and was trying to change the world. They didn’t want employees sluggish and falling asleep after a 2,000 calorie fast-food lunch.

The days were long, and everyone needed to be sharp. You can’t do that on Mountain Dew and a bag of Doritos.

Setting Up a Healthy Culture

Before Google was in their giant sprawling campuses, they worked out of a house. But even in those early days, Brin and Page were thinking about a free cafeteria.

When they moved out of the house to their first location, one of the first things they looked for was a chef.

The company only had 12 people at the time, and it seemed like an unnecessary expense.

But the founders wanted quick, accessible, and healthy food so that employees wouldn’t have to worry about going out with only fast food as an option.

The company soon grew to 40 people — but the concept was still in place with the creation of a small cafe.

When Google rapidly grew, they moved to the much bigger complex, which gave them even more food options.

Google had cafes throughout the campus and small “microkitchens” everywhere you went.

These small kitchens would have vitamin-infused waters, high-end organic coffees, and healthy snacks always available.

The idea with the Google campus is they wanted to recreate the university campus feel — complete with food options everywhere.

The difference this time around was that all the food options would be of higher quality compared to a university food court.

Making Nutrition a Priority

Google and food quickly went hand-in-hand. And throughout this all — the priority was on high-quality, nutritious whole foods.

All the cafes on campus had nutrition information to educate the employees.

One of Google’s chefs — Josef Desimone — said that they were there to help employees learn to make the best nutrition decisions possible.

Examples of their education would inform employees of why going for naturally sweetened sparkling water would be better than Coca-Cola.

This wasn’t always about presenting the perfect option — but educating people on a better alternative in any situation.

They also wanted to teach the employees about keeping things simple and healthy.

One cafe at Google was called “5IVE.” This cafe only would prepare dishes with 5 ingredients or less.

Part of the education by the chefs was to show employees how real whole foods need little to improve them.

You don’t want to eat foods that have a list of ingredients — real whole foods ARE the ingredients.

All of this free healthy food didn’t come cheap. Stacey Sullivan — Google’s director of human resources — said that the rough estimate of food cost per employee was around $17.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but with the astonishing growth of Google; this ended up costing them around $80 million a year.

Final Thoughts

A lot of companies have got on board with free, healthy food services.

Pixar, Dropbox, Apple, and other giant companies have all learned that free and healthy food is not only the way to their employee's hearts — but their productivity.

Google would take things a step further by offering services that embrace all areas of wellness.

They would offer free yoga classes, fitness facilities, health experts to speak, pilates, and massages.

Nutrition is a critical part of overall health — but it is just part of the equation.

Health and wellness isn’t a singular thing but made up of several variables.

The idea with the Google food culture was to help their employees with a sizable piece of the wellness puzzle.

The takeaway is as simple as it seems: focus on real whole foods to keep yourself nourished and to get the best productivity out of yourself.

Whether you work for a trillion-dollar company or work for yourself — you want to perform the best you can.

And that starts with feeding yourself the cleanest foods possible.

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