Yahoo! Gets Free Food, Thanks To New CEO Marissa Mayer

Maggie Gorman|July 30, 2012 4:24 pm EST

There's no such thing as a free lunch — unless you work for Yahoo! Now, employees of this struggling tech giant no longer have to shell out $5.61 for a Teriyaki chicken panini every day at lunch, thanks to brand new CEO Marissa Mayer's declaration of free food for all.

Along with the establishment of weekly Friday-afternoon meetings and a promise to improve basically everything about the company, Mayer made all the food in the "URLs Café" free. Until now, only the coffee-bar drinks have been paid for by company co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo.

Mayer hails from the sunny, Razor-scooters-and-video-games-filled offices of Google, where food has always been free and morale has always been high. Perhaps noticing the connection, she brought the policy to Yahoo! as part of an attempt to raise spirits amongst the company's wary workers.

Yahoo finally "has a seat at the cool kids' table" in Silicon Valley, where free food is old news. Along with Google, Facebook and Twitter also provide their employees with free snacks and daily catered meals. Google boasts lunch and dinner provided by in-house gourmet chefs, while Tagged touts a stocked kitchen, weekly happy hour, on-site breakfast, and lunch and dinner catered by top restaurants in the area.

Clearly, ample free food is essential to technological innovation. Looks like the hopes and dreams of Yahoo's future are being built on the joy of free meals — we're optimistic.