Can 200 People Eat Dinner Together?

Jesse Zhang says a team of 200 people cannot eat dinner together anymore. Catering has one clear value: everyone eats at the same time.

He used to tell people to remember the old office. It was less nice than the current office, and he wanted them to hold onto it as the good old days, when everyone was eating dinner together. At 200 people a shared dinner is impossible. People still eat together, but they order food and it arrives at different times, so the meal is trickier. The team ran a catering experiment. People liked it because it felt like the old days, when everyone ate together. They thought the food was bad, so he plans to find better food. The dynamic of eating at the same time still matters.

He still wants the company to try more shared meals.