Elon Musk says free employee lunches at Twitter HQ were costing more than $400 per meal because 'almost no one' was in the office

• Elon Musk said Sunday that free staff lunches at Twitter HQ were costing more than $400 per meal.
• He said badge-in records at the San Francisco office showed average occupancy below 10%.

Elon Musk said Sunday that free staff lunches at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters were costing more than $400 per meal because 'almost no one' was in the office.

He said that according to badge-in records, average occupancy in the office over the last 12 months was below 10%, peaking at 25%.

Musk was tweeting Sunday after The New York Times reported that Twitter employees would have to start paying for office lunches themselves.

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He said criticism of the move was "especially bizarre given that almost no one came into the office," adding: "There are more people preparing breakfast than eating breakfast. They don't even bother serving dinner, because there is no one in the building."

Twitter spends $13 million a year on food service at its San Francisco HQ, Musk said.

Musk was challenged on his $400 meal cost estimate by Tracy Hawkins, a former Twitter employee. Hawkins' LinkedIn profile says she was a VP for real estate and work transformation at Twitter, with a focus on hybrid working.

Hawkins said of Musk's estimate: "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. Attendance was anything from 20-50% in the offices."

Musk said Hawkins' figures were "false."

The disagreement could be because Hawkins referred to "attendance" across multiple offices, while Musk spoke about occupancy rates at Twitter's San Francisco HQ specifically.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

In his first address to Twitter employees after taking control of the company, Musk told staff to expect 80-hour work weeks and fewer perks like free office lunches, according to Bloomberg.

In an interview ahead of the G20 summit in Indonesia, Musk said he was working from "morning to night, seven days a week," adding: "The amount that I torture myself is next level."

Twitter ended remote-working soon after Musk took the reins of the company. Last week, Musk sent an email to staff at 2.39 a.m. telling them to return to the office or "resignation accepted."

It followed 50% of Twitter's 7,500 staff being laid off after Musk took over.