This is calculation makes no sense.

Let's face it: there is no way that their on-site cafe can pump out 3200-4800 meals per hour (assuming a 3-hr. lunch service and 2-hr. breakfast service).

Let's take a more reasonable look. Let's say the average meal takes 5 minutes to prepare. 50 cooks (my guess about their staffing based on the facilities) can handle 600 meals an hour.

I can see them (the Mountain View cafe) pumping out 3,000 meals per workday at an average of $7-8 per meal, maybe 240 days/year (throwing in vacation days, holidays). So maybe $5-6 million annually.

EXCEPT - they have like 50 offices. Get out the valley much?

Well, Silicon Alley Insider only covered the Mountain View and NYC campuses. My calculations were only based on the MV campus and their worldwide headcount is about 10,000 people.

Even if each office covered on-site employee meals like the Googleplex (which I doubt), it would still be about $10 million, far less than the $73 million that SAI guesses.

Oops, I have a typo. The total headcount is 16,000 (but the $10 million figure stands).

@BartKela: I'm not sure your assumptions make sense, either -- the service is cafeteria-style, so why 5 minutes per "meal"? -- but I'd note that Google's cafes also serve dinner.

Ah, the 5 minutes per meal is just a guess, as is my guess about their staffing levels. I could have erred there.

However, I have seen the Mountain View facility and it cannot handle 3,000 people an hour. To assume that every employee eats two meals a day at the cafe seems to be unrealistic.

Dinner is probably served to a much smaller number of people, mostly single engineers who roll into work later in the morning. No matter if it's free, after a while, you get tired of eating institutional grub three times a day and spending ten hours in the same office complex.

@BartKela:
I think you are underestimating the Googlers' unwillingness to venture outside the campus for food. Also, all the Googlers I know work late, so most of them end up eating their dinners there.

Also, keep in mind that Google doesn't serve just meals but also a plethora of snacks, beverages, and other various non-meal foods.

There are 18 different cafes on the Mountain View campus alone, several of which routinely feed several thousand people at every lunch (and every office worldwide covers employee meals). Many people do in fact eat three meals a day on campus, more come early for breakfast than stay late for dinner - and despite reports to the contrary, most employees are gone by 6pm. Almost no one leaves campus to eat, despite several restaurants within walking distance, because it's hardly "institutional grub" - do you not read other media outlets?

Yes, Valleywag is my sole source of Silicon Valley gossip. Am I screwed?

Yeah, I know a couple of people who eat there twice a week or so who aren't on the payroll. And like Owen said, the dinner service ain't shabby or remarkably cheap.

You also have to consider that they buy organic and free range meats which adds considerably to their costs. They but a lot from local farmers as well too.

And I don't know what department externality was hanging in but the group I worked for, there were always some of us there until 9, 10 or 11 at night who had arrived at work at 7 am and no I'm not a new unmarried college grad.