Googling Some Vegetables

Google has always been one of the best employers imaginable when it comes to corporate breakfasts, lunches, dinners and healthy snacks. The choice of free(!) restaurants and dishes on its own HQ campus is endless. It makes a job at the company even more desirable to applicants. But Google is going one step further.

Because the internet company likes to stay ahead of the curve on sustainability and health issues, and wants to offer a solution, it is shifting into the next gear. On its own company campus in Mountain View, where 20,000 employees are fed daily in thirty different cafés, it is now growing its own vegetables in accordance with the farm-to-table philosophy.

Google HQ feeds around 20,000 employees daily in 30 cafés. For free.

This takes place in recycled shipping containers from Boston-based start-up Freight Farms. With LED lights, controlled temperatures and so-called hydroponic systems, in which plants grow in water instead of soil, Google is thus meeting its own vegetable needs.

Each Leafy Green Machine, as such a container is typically Americanly called, produces enough leafy greens and herbs for a week. There is even enough left over for cooking classes and educational sessions about freshly harvested food.

Text:

Marjan Ippel

Image: Freight Farm