Google in a Hungry Search for Executive Chefs

Google Inc.’s stock is cooking, but the Internet giant is having trouble in the kitchen.

Google on Thursday announced a global search for two executive chefs to oversee preparation of the company’s most celebrated employee perk: free gourmet meals.

To help feed the rapidly growing company, Google advertised an opening in December for a second lead chef to help Charlie Ayers, who formerly cooked for the Grateful Dead. Then, in May, Ayers quit to start his own chain of restaurants. Neither job has been filled.

“It’s been a challenge to get someone who has the scale and quality” to live up to the company’s expectations, said Susan Wojcicki, a Google vice president on the hiring committee.

The requirements: five or more years as a sous-chef and three years as an executive chef. Must be able to cook for vegans and carnivores alike, and use organic food whenever possible.

Wojcicki would not disclose the pay. “I’m sure it will be competitive, plus all the Google benefits,” she said, which include -- along with the food, of course -- stock options, sports facilities, massage and yoga classes.

Google plans to invite the top applicants for a “cook-off,” preparing meals for several dozen members of a “tasting committee” that will probably include co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

“You know when you meet the right person,” said Wojcicki, who put Ayers through the same paces in 1999, when the company had about 40 employees. Today it has about 4,200.

Finding a chef with experience cooking for thousands of people isn’t easy, said Dawn Jantsch, managing director of the American Culinary Federation, which represents nearly 19,000 chefs. Still, she has never heard of a company issuing a news release and holding a cook-off to find a corporate chef.

“It almost sounds like a reality TV show,” she said.