Here’s the math: Googlers in the U.S. get two meals a day free, according to the jobs page, but people we talk to at the Mountain View Googleplex tell us employees there are often chowing down three times a day. Google is open 251 days a year. So let’s say that Google is providing about 600 meals per year, per employee.
…
Cost per employee? San Jose-based caterer Abe Caterman (really!) guesses it would cost Google about $15 per day, per employee, for breakfast and lunch. But Prentiss Hall, a helpful exec at Aramark Business Dining Services, thinks Google could be spending closer to $30 a day, based on the quality and level of service the company provides.*
So we multiplied the $30/day by the 9,600 employees in Mountain View and New York by the 251 days Google is open every year. Remember that Google probably spends a lot more than this, because there are employees outside those offices, and because visitors are there all the time eating. (One friend at Google tells us that a number of Mozilla employees treat the cafeteria as their own.)
The grand total: By our guesstimate, Larry and Sergey are spending at least $72,288,000 per year to fill their workers’ pie-holes. How can they afford to do that? Easy, of course: Last year Google (GOOG) earned $4.2 billion.