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Apple Planning To Build Private Restaurant
First time accepted submitter a90Tj2P7 writes "Apple is building a 21,468 square foot private restaurant in Cupertino so employees can talk shop over lunch without being overheard. Apple's director of real estate facilities, Dan Wisenhunt, stated that: 'We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they're engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations.'"
>apple
>research
nice try
Adele Goldberg -- "actually, i did think of that, and told you guys, but you ignored me"
Consumer - "and that democratization of information between Xerox, Apple, and Microsoft brought technology to the masses and created the computer revolution of the 80s and 90s"
Apple CEO - "and we cant have that again, because the 80s and 90s were brutal for the entrenched interests. like Xerox"
Google - "no shit. thats why you shouldnt base your fucking business model on making information secret, when your entire history has been based on borrowing ideas from other people"
I hope they serve more than just apples.
...that we are just better than everyone else.
I remember when everyone was in Bandley 3, you could just sit at the local The Good Earth restaurant and hear all kinds of chatter.
If they don't know those have microphones and cameras, they won't realize security is a waste of time.
or that you can hear everything just by the vibrations off of the windows.
be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm hunting trilobytes.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
employee dorms to prevent honey trap operations.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Soon enough, employees will have to eat there..
I always see Apple employees in the nearby Panera, Boulanger, Aqui, Chipotle and other nearby restaurants. I think these employees still want to get out of work and experience some lunch variety just as I do.
Oops looks like there is a bug, /., this post belongs to another story :-)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
And lose iPhone prototypes without being publicly embarrassed.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
It makes you wonder if Apple is building this restaurant just so it can have a place where employees can lose their prototypes where Apple doesn't have to worry about posing as police officers to get them back...
Cue the orchard jokes in 3...2...1....
Taking a nod from their Chinese counterparts wouldn't dormitories be the next step? If workers don't leave except for vacations wouldn't it limit people leaving prototypes in restaurants and other issues that arise?
Now I just have to bug/record one place to get all the industrial espionage I need!
I've worked for big companies, and for startups. I have to say that on-campus dining facilities are pretty standard for big companies. We normally call them "cafeterias" but if you want to call it a restaurant knock yourself out.
Not to mention that Google's in-house chefs are a thing of legend. I really don't see what's news here.
I really think this is no big deal. My office has a cafeteria, and the building is "secured". It's been that way since it was built in the 80's. I realize this place will probably have better food and might be down the street but I think it's the same basic concept.
Apple has a wonderful cafeteria and a seriously epic variety of food, they are just out of space (food stations are being set up outside etc...). Makes perfect sense for them to house a larger "restaurant" (aka cafeteria) so employees don't have to head out to the local BJ's. Why is this being spun as an OMG Apple is too wealthy and splurging. Yahoo and others have freaking DMV and hairstyling services for employees (okay maybe Yahoo is not the best example here....)
* We dance where angels fear to tread *
but i think im mostly kind of right.
Seriously, many of the reasons for building in-house cafes was to allow those kinds of discussions to occur. Yet, many conversations occur outside in other restaurants. As such, they should have the dining room divided into multiple sections so that it is possible to have conversation with outsiders, but not having others listening in.
Also, they should seriously consider the idea of having multiple kitchens in it, and allow new chefs that come up with new concepts test it out there and then fund them for other restaurants if it is liked.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Applebee's is in trouble.
Bow before me, for I am root.
n/t
My company has had this thing called a MESS HALL for decades. In fact, I'm pretty sure they prepared all the food in the first year, and are just thawing it out now.
And you know if the Army is doing something, then everybody else has had it for years.
'We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable...'
Sounds like a pronouncement from the Department of Homeland Security.
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begins - welcome to the new future, as spawned in Silicon Valley, where all workers will soon find themselves ensconced, enslaved, and incarcerated!
I work for a company that has an on-site restaurant/cafeteria... The food is fine and is subsidized by the company... But most people don't eat there because, really, there's only a subset of my co-workers that I feel like talking to at lunch. The rest, I don't really want to socialize with. On the one or two occasions where I've eaten at the cafeteria, there's always someone that sits down and wants to talk to me that frankly, I would rather not talk to... So we go out for lunch every day, somewhere different.. We're careful about what we discuss and usually, it's not about work anyway.
I've heard of this place where you can go to talk shop without fear of being overheard. They call it a cafeteria. Only Apple is arrogant enough to call it a private restaurant.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Back in my day, the place that your work place provides food was called a cafeteria .. not a private restaurant. Does Apple call their vending machines 'food carts' too?
Ah, yes. Blind loyalty and marketing. This explains why approaching 50% of their customers have never owned an Apple product before. Why they have the largest digital music download store, the best selling digital music player, the best selling cell phone, the highest customer satisfaction rating, and the best profit margins in the industry.
Whatever kool-aid you're drinking is working.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Mmm... iDumpling.
And so Apple reinvented the corporate cafeteria. Strange, you'd think a company of their size would have one already.
While I'll agree with the sentiment, the numbers and rationale is a bit exaggerated. One of the great things about the area is the walkability, and food can often be found, consumed and the individual returned within half the time you quoted.
This strikes me as something that Cook would do to "seem" Jobsian, but not quite getting the point or overall Apple paradigm quite right.
www.chihuahuarescue.com- Help to end dog abuse, abandonment and cruelty
Back'in my day we called these things Cafeterias.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Apple could call the campus at Cupretino the iCompound.
Actually, that could be quite a valid explanation. Many companies do what Apple does, and do it even better in many cases. Are you sure your eyes are working okay? I've herd there's a nasty case of blind loyalty going around.
They are selling real apples. Are they also bitten?
I doubt that "so our employees can talk shop without the competition overhearing us" is their #1 reason.
Your skepticism is appropriate. Apple doesn't only worry about chatter between employees and non-employees. They also worry about chatter between members of different teams within Apple. Employees working on Macs may not know anything more about that new iPhone being developed than the public.
Its been a while since my last visit to Apple but I recall signs on the wall at the cafeteria on Apple's main campus that warned employees not to chat about their work due to fears of being overheard. Again, this is the cafeteria on the main campus, in a secure building, available only to employees and invited visitors that have signed NDAs.
For copyright infringing recipes...
Apple sues pirate chefs for replicating Apple's copyrighted recipes.
Next Apple sues grandmothers for piracy for baking Apple trademarked chocolate chip cookies :P
Any other company could do what they do.
You'd think that they would, then. It seems to be profitable.
Problem solved, declares DHS Chief Janet Napolitano.
If that's true, that any other company can do what they do, then why is every single phone manufacturer besides Apple and Samsung struggling? (i.e. Motorola, HTC, LG, Sony-Ericson, Nokia, and RIM?)
Why is the PC manufacturer that sells the most computers thinking about getting rid of their PC division?
"Doing it better" in business means more profitably or at least with better margins. Which company is "doing it better than Apple"?
Not surprise, indeed kind of surprised it's 1: not already the case, 2: it would raise any interest external to the enterprise concerned, In fact in house restaurants or cafes (or for the down market canteens) are pretty much De jure for most of the large research organisations I've worked for. Actually one good thing about them is it encourages conversation between areas that would normally not have communications beyond hierarchical memo passing and divisional manager meetings so, for a not entirely hypothetical example - people from the material sciences area end up talking over lunch to people from the electronic engineering area and people from the remote sensing area and so a project is born to build more resistant tidal sensors that don't need to be replaced every 3 or 4 months.
I'm betting they'll take cheap diner food, put it on fancy plates, and charge 3x more for it. Amirite?
Clearly worked on you.
Best selling digital music player -- Marketing.
Best selling cell phone -- Marketing.
Best profit margins -- Marketing.
Largest digital music download store -- Marketing.
You were saying?
I wondered where I can get some really good Apple Pie!
if this wasn't a election year, he would pass it.
1. Walled Garden Salad
2. Beleaguered Sea Bass
3. ThaiPad
Most larger companies have one of these. It's called a cafeteria.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Manager: We're building a fancy new cafeteria, just like Google and a lot of other Si Valley companies.
Assistant: Very good sir. Shall I alert the media?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Letting people talk about secure topics while in a cafeteria that all employees are allowed in isn't security.
I'm sure they'll get around to providing security for their customers someday
... Circle Jerks Thank you.
So you're saying that every other company in the consumer electronics biz has lousy marketing?
At some point it's gotta break for you apple haters. Apple is popular because they put out products people like. No more, no less.
If it was purely marketing, why hasn't anyone out done apple?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You've listed one of the very important parts to producing a successful product and/or service, yes. Well done.
Putting Apple's success *entirely* on "marketing and blind loyalty" is one of the biggest reasons Apple does so well while others flounder. It's very easy to dismiss their success out of hand without understanding what it is they do so well.
If it really is "so easy" and that "any company could do what they do" (as the original AC post claimed) then... why aren't they? The goal of a company is to make money. If what Apple is doing is so easy then surely there should be lots of companies rolling in cash?
I'm honestly curious. If it's all 100% marketing, why isn't anyone else doing it? Surely other companies can hire marketing people too, right?
Because they use their huge amount of capital to suck up all the available resources, from raw materials to labor, not to mention the patent trolling bullshit...
Isn't it equally possible that Apple's true innovation isn't the devices but the way they manipulate the market in their favor? Let's not forget the collusion bullshit they're getting caught in now, either...
And get them back without a huge blog leak and lawsuit.
Next week, they will be announcing the company town with company supplied housing.
Or the employees could just STFU in public, like those of every other corporation on the planet.
But maybe Apple's employees aren't presumed to be capable of discretion, seeing as they've repeatedly proven stupid enough to leave internal prototypes at random bars...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
iMcDonalds
I did a summer internship at Apple in the late 80s and I'm sure things have changed quite a bit since then, but still one thing I thought was pretty clever of them as out-in-the-open evil schemes go was that they made it very very easy for employees to have no life outside of work. There was *tons* of social stuff built into work (happy hour every Friday afternoon, off-site stuff like going to a ball game or an amusement park with your group during work hours), and there were showers in the building and sleeping in your cube was tolerated. Adding a nice restaurant seems obvious -- one more thing covered that might otherwise make you leave work.
Err, yes actually, big profit margins are a good indicator of a market distortion.
1. Apple's marketing people are the best in the consumer electronics industry.
2. Their top management always knew that they were a CONSUMER electronics company. Not a computer company that also made some accessories. Not a technology company or a software company, although they were really good at those things too.
Apple's phone doesn't employ much more advanced tech than high-end Android phones.
Apple's music store doesn't employ any technology that its competitors don't have.
There's nothing unusually compelling about their music players -- any more.
Their distinction is that they got there first.
There are two aspects of marketing where Apple really excelled. The first is conventional marketing: push, push, push that product. The second (which is really the first) is that Apple, unlike its competition, wasn't afraid to go out and create a market where one didn't exist. That's always been part of Apple's business model. It started with the Apple computer. They were the first company to really market computers to home users. They didn't INVENT computers or even computers that could have been sold directly to consumers. They were just the first to ignore their fear that the market wouldn't accept them.
Apple was right out front with the digital music players and a digital music store. Then they were the first to bring music to phones. It's not like nobody had thought of this before. It was all being discussed in electronics companies across the the USA and Japan. Lots of engineers had great ideas for how this would work. They all knew how these things could be done. But at these other companies management wasn't interested in taking a risk on introducing a new category of consumer product. Apple was all about that risk.
Steve Jobs, specifically, wanted to be first because he knew how much being first was worth.
The cafeteria The break room The watercooler A conference room, with catering A conference room, bring your own food.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
The Apple Restaurant #1 seller is simply a whopper in a new wrapper that will only cost you 14.99 + tax + applecare with no pickles or onions to spare you any chance of heartburn, and any modifications must be approved by the CEO, but may be revoked later
Have it your way!
I recall signs on the wall at the cafeteria on Apple's main campus that warned employees not to chat about their work
I worked there for three and a half years as an employee, and I've been back twice as a consultant, and I've never seen any such signs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So Apple is building it's own canteen - what a shocker. I'd like to mod this "boring".
Either they do overhear something or they don't, whether they overhear everything is another matter all together.
I recall signs on the wall at the cafeteria on Apple's main campus that warned employees not to chat about their work
I worked there for three and a half years as an employee, and I've been back twice as a consultant, and I've never seen any such signs.
I definitely recall a sign/poster warning about chatting about unannounced projects/products where somewhere nearby can overhear you. It was 1998 or '99.
So your explanation is that Apple has a dominate position because they have a dominate position. That makes perfect sense, unless there was some point in the past when Apple was near failure, had virtually no capital, and a negligible market share in all their market segments. But if that was ever the case I guess we can just say "magic" got them to where they are, so we don't have to admit anyone ever wanted to buy an Apple product on its merits.
... someone nearby ...
...they're right.
Srsly. As a whole bunch of posts have said, plenty of companies have in-house cafeterias, and this is Apple's second one.
Maybe it'll save some employees the disappointment of finding out that the Little Mustard Seed isn't a sandwich shop....
Or mabey they are just sick of loosing iphone prototypes...
They never got there first. There were other computers, tablets, other music players, other music stores, other phones with music. You're talking out your ass.
Apple has excellent marketing, yes. Microsoft spends tons on marketing too, but theirs sucks.
What Apple did was to make tech delightful. Simple and elegant. They ditched floppies first. They made it really easy to buy music and put it on a portable device and make playlists without a tutorial. They did something unprecedented when they made the iPhone-- at home activation. I was waiting in line on release day (for the mother-in-law) a hundred people or so from the from the front, yet I walked out with two iPhones 45 minutes after they opened the doors. (then I wisely waited two days before attempting to activate). For the first time, using a web browser on a phone was fun instead of a disappointment.
Look at the consumer section of Dell's on-line store. Look at Apple's on-line store. Now which one is more scary to a non-technical person looking for a personal laptop? Do they want the Intel Core i3, the 2nd Gen Intel Core i3, the 2nd Gen Intel Core i5, the... Do they want IKEA laptop covers? Or do they instead want something that "Handles daily tasks with ease" but is rated 3/5 stars.
The Jukebox 6000, and its successor the Jukebox Studio (see below), used standard USB 1.1 technology, transferring data at a maximum rate of 1 MB per second. These models transfer data at a comparably slow rate compared with succeeding Archos devices using the USB 2.0 standard.
Regarding the popular predecessor to the iPod line, the Archos Jukebox, Wikipedia has this to say:
This device was released Saturday, December 9, 2000 and discontinued as of Friday, May 16, 2003. It weighs 350 g.
The Jukebox is historically notable for shipping with a user interface and operating system so unfriendly and bug-ridden as to inspire Björn Stenberg and other programmers to begin to develop a superior, free and open-source replacement operating system. This project became Rockbox.[citation needed]
Apple isn't so much about making "new categories of consumer product" as they are about finding broken categories of overly complex and unsatisfactory products and re-imagining them as delightful products. I've supported family on Windows and on Macs.. once they get Macs, they don't call me even 1/10th as much for support issues.
It sounds like a great the to encourage employees to eat together in a on-site restaurant. Many research facilities do this as well, and I believe it can help employees to exchange ideas while feeling it's a safe place to change them. And of course you save time not having to go off-site and can have longer lunch :-)
It appears that your company is running an onsite food preparation & service facility, disguised as a so-called "staff canteen", in flagrant breach of our patents.
You owe us 28 squazillion dollars.
Signed [crossed out with a crayon] Steve [/crossed out with a crayon] [written in with a crayon] Tim [/written in with a crayon]
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not really. Big profit margin means you manage your cost of production extremely well as well as sell it at a good price. A lot of people just dumbly put it all down to marketing while Apple is the king of operational optimization and low cost production. And before you cry slave labor or what other nonsense their main low cost comes from pre-purchasing stockpiles of components well in advance. Basically they give a manufacturer the billions needed to build a new factory and have sole right for anything made there for the first N years at pre-determined price. The manufacturer has 0 risk in building the factory and a sure customer for N years so they go for it happily. The competition however is screwed as they can only buy dribbles from that plant at high cost or got to produce it elsewhere for much higher cost therefore reducing their profit margin a lot.
And that's not something others can easily do because they don't have such a huge cash horde as Apple has (110B in cash and marketable equities). Throwing 5-10B against a new technology is no problem for Apple yet it's more than most companies can manage at any point in time without taking a loan that will again eat into their profit margin over years.
Wild guess, are you around 13 years old?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're clearly not trusted enough to enter the real top-secret inner party canteen.
I've said too much. Don't be surprised if perpenso suddenly stops posti
@!. . &
no carrier
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Note to canteen manager: the phrase "eat your own dog food" is used in a metaphorical sense.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
....in house iHookers? The secret service could use these too apparently.
I am not even sure why this is news that Apple decided to build an employee cafeteria, I wonder if they are going to try and patent and succeed. Yes we know that pretty much every large company in the USA has an employee cafeteria, and we know that in some of them the employee can order their food online in the morning for a specific lunch shift to be ready right when they arrive at lunch, but I tell you non-thinking members of the patent office this is new how many can do it while talking on a mobile device? Or using a touch screen interface instead of a mouse this is novel and new ....
They are just building a goddamn canteen, people ! Move on...
They're called "company cafeterias".
Let's assume that 50% of Apple's customers are new customers. Consider the other half...
It sounds like half the customers who've bought Apple products haven't thought the product was superior enough to come back and buy another. And I would think that heavy repeat sales would be an indication that the manufacturer had superior products. I'm not as impressed by 50% of their customers being new customers (that's marketing), as I would be by 80% being repeat customers (that's brand loyalty).
Remember - if you bought a Mac fifteen years ago but never bought another Apple product, you're still an "Apple customer". You've had plenty of opportunity to go back to Apple, but haven't done so. What does that say about the product?
This always annoys me, whatever the company concerned. The distinction between 'people' and 'employees' mightn't be conscious, but it's an insidious feature of the commodification of human resources. Every time I hear a phrase like it I fear we're one step closer to the sweatshop.
While it's lovely that Apple employees are getting their own exclusive place to hang out and drink fancy drinks with umbrellas, my dark side tells me that company policy will mandate they eat there at least once a week, because research has shown that this will decrease corporate espionage by up to 20%.
Most large companies have their own restaurants. Baker Hughes, Slumberger, SAS, and BMC for example on most all of their campuses.
No, you am right the first time.
I can't believe I had to scroll down this far before someone pointed this out. "Apple to set up an employee cafeteria" is some kind of news item?
And what's worse is they already HAVE one...I've eaten there (2003), and it's called Cafe Macs:
http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/apple%E2%80%99s_corporate_food_court_o%E2%80%99_plenty_reviewed
http://g.co/maps/aqgpy
And yes, it's full of silly hippie food. Macrobiotic this and vegan that, although I will say they make awesome burritos (spinach tortilla).
With the first link, the chain is forged.
1. Apple's marketing people are the best in the consumer electronics industry.
Let me fix that :
Apple's marketing people are the best consumers in the electronics industry.
So since Google has 11 gourmet cafeterias in their "Googleplex" - indeed, most large enough single-company sites have restaurants of their own - they are also a cult?
Any other company could do what they do.
But they didn't. Dismissing innovation after the fact is just dumb.
sounds like umbrella corporation type shit
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
As others have pointed out, Apple already has its own dining facilities, the Caffe Macs, with the flagship one being in Infinite Loop itself. The problem is, that with Apple's growth sprawling all over Cupertino and beyond, it's hard to find good places to meet folks from other buildings whether for lunch or otherwise. This just sounds like a recognition of the problem: (a) that the current cafeterias could no longer handle the capacity, and (b) Apple needs common meeting areas for folks across its campuses.
(Incidentally, Caffe Macs food is very good. It's not free like Google's, but tastier IMHO. Of course, YMMV.)
Sounds like an expansion of their Walled Garden approach to things. Where does it end? Will they build a little town or city that their employees and families have to live in with border checkpoints to prevent concept prototypes from being accidentally left behind in public bars?
Probably related to the same bug that has stories being posted multiple times.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Apple isn't so much about making "new categories of consumer product" as they are about finding broken categories of overly complex and unsatisfactory products and re-imagining them as delightful products.
They dumb-down mass-market-intended concepts to the lowest common denominator, then wrap them in dumbed-down "elegance" (its just white plastic and metal, folks).
That's neither marketing genius, nor is it "thinking different". That is McMarketing -- and of course it works. Others failed before them precisely because they were trying to do more, more differently than the average consumer could handle.
As long as your expectations are no more than a millimieter deep, you will be "delighted".
Scheduling App for the "Rooftop View" that is!
Apple has hired many new employees at their campus in Cupertino and wants to provide them with food. But their old campus is full, and the new campus won't be ready for a couple of years. So they build a new cafeteria just around the corner.
Which makes the Apple haters go berserk with all kinds of wired fantasies about secrecy.
In case you forgot Apple almost went bust and even received money from MS just so MS could basically have a competitor. So do feel free to explain how they went from that to being some huge "evil monster" without having made something that people want.
If it's all shit then how did they go from near bankruptcy to being so profitable? It's not marketing alone. Marketing alone hasn't saved Windows Mobile and that's because it's shit.
I'm probably twice your age, not half. I remember the release of the first Apple computer. Before that there were various kit computers like the Altair, designed for hobbyists. Apple made the first one really designed and marketed as a consumer product.
Commodore's PET was a close second. A PET was the second computer I ever programmed. The first I had to program via a teletype and store my programs on punch tape. The Apple II was the third computer I used and programmed.
Nobody said their stuff was shit. It works and it works pretty well. Some of their products work VERY well. But there are other products on the market that also work very well. The difference is the effectiveness of their marketing.
When Apple introduced the Apple I, there was no other consumer-market computer. Before that there were kits for hobbyists and bigger computers for scientists.
When Apple introduced digital music players there were other players that captured significant consumer interest. So there was no market. A simplistic UI and a flashy iTunes store made that enormously profitable.
When Apple introduced the iPhone there was no other music phone on the market that was worth the trouble and nobody knew how to make it profitable.
When Apple introduced iPads there were other tablets on the market. They were klunky and didn't sell very well. Again, no market because the applications that you could run on them were too limited.
Apple created all those markets by creating products designed for and targeted at a wide consumer demographic. They were easy to use. And Apple really learned their lesson from the troubles they had in the early 90s. Macintoshes were the LAST products they made and maybe the last they'll ever make that aren't targeted to capture a continuing revenue stream for paid content.
Will Apple have an on-campus bar for iPhone prototypes to be lost at?
If their employees would stop dropping prototypes in bars, I think they'd think less about it.
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