Twitter spending $13 million every year on meals at San Francisco HQ: Musk

Twitter spends $13 million yearly on food service at its San Francisco headquarters, Elon Musk tweeted on Monday. Replying to former vice president of Work Transformation Tracy Hawkins’ claim that the company earlier spent $20-25 per day per person and the attendance was between 20-50 per cent, Musk said that the average occupancy was below 10 per cent. The peak occupancy at the San Francisco headquarters was 25 per cent.

The issue came forth after a report by New York Times (NYT) said that Musk was planning to remove free meals on Twitter. Citing the report, a person wrote on Twitter, “He’s failure incarnate”, to which another user said that maybe employees “should learn to cook”.

Musk replied to the tweets saying, “Especially bizarre given that almost no one came to the office. Estimated cost per lunch served in past 12 months is >$400.”

“This is a lie. I ran this program up until a week ago when I resigned because I didn’t want to work for @elonmusk For breakfast & lunch we spent $20-$25 a day per person. This enabled employees to work thru lunchtime & mtgs (sic). Attendance was anything from 20-50 per cent in the offices.,” Hawkins wrote. Musk again replied and claimed that Twitter was paying $13 million every year for the meals.

“There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast. They don’t even bother serving dinner, because there is no one in the building,” he added.

False. Twitter spends $13M/year on food service for SF HQ. Badge in records show peak occupancy was 25%, average occupancy below 10%.

There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast.

They don’t even bother serving dinner, because there is no one in the building.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

Since the takeover, Musk has announced layoffs as well as a return to the office for Twitter employees. He also fired the top management, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, on the first day of his office. Under Musk’s leadership, several other sweeping changes are expected in the company in the coming days.