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Comment by johnz | Hacker News Reader

If they spend $1,000,000 for 6,600 guests for 7 days then it only costs $21.60 in supplies to feed each guest per day.

They only talk about the 6600 guests as part of that purchase. The video talks about having 1085 employees in the different kitchens. They need to eat as well, so does their meals come from this same stock of food? There's also the rest of the staff like engineering, bridge crew, cleaning, etc. I'm guessing there's a couple hundred more employees at least. I'm pretty sure I'm thinking way more about this than the producer's target audience though.

This video is a bit more extensive and entertaining with such questions addressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48HQCgZWg0

Cruise ships often have more than .4 crew per guest. So 6600 guests would mean more than 2600 crew.

https://www.cruisewatch.com/top-10/ships-passenger-crew-rati...

The top ships there - Crystal, SeaDream, SilverSea, SeaBourn - are all small ultra-luxury vessels. C̵a̵r̵i̵b̵b̵e̵a̵n̵ ̵P̵r̵i̵n̵c̵e̵s̵s̵,̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵o̵n̵l̵y̵ ̵R̵o̵y̵a̵l̵ ̵C̵a̵r̵i̵b̵b̵e̵a̵n̵ ̵v̵e̵s̵s̵e̵l̵ ̵o̵n̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵l̵i̵s̵t̵ ̵[̵0̵]̵ ̵h̵a̵s̵ ̵a̵ ̵p̵a̵s̵s̵e̵n̵g̵e̵r̵:̵c̵r̵e̵w̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵0̵.̵3̵7̵ ̵-̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵h̵a̵l̵f̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵p̵a̵s̵s̵e̵n̵g̵e̵r̵ ̵c̵a̵p̵a̵c̵i̵t̵y̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵s̵h̵i̵p̵ ̵i̵n̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵v̵i̵d̵e̵o̵.̵ ̵S̵o̵ ̵I̵'̵d̵ ̵i̵m̵a̵g̵i̵n̵e̵ ̵0̵.̵3̵ ̵w̵o̵u̵l̵d̵ ̵b̵e̵ ̵a̵ ̵g̵o̵o̵d̵ ̵e̵s̵t̵i̵m̵a̵t̵e̵ ̵f̵o̵r̵ ̵a̵ ̵s̵h̵i̵p̵ ̵t̵w̵i̵c̵e̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵ ̵s̵i̵z̵e̵ ̵-̵ ̵r̵i̵g̵h̵t̵ ̵a̵r̵o̵u̵n̵d̵ ̵2̵0̵0̵0̵ ̵c̵r̵e̵w̵.̵ EDIT2: Caribbean Princess is not a Royal Caribbean ship, and Royal Caribbean's naming scheme is "* of the Seas" not "Caribbean *". Really not sure how I messed that one up.

EDIT: But we can do better than that! The Oasis-class of ships are the only ones with a ~6600 passenger capacity, and they of course all have wikipedia pages [1]. And that lists the crew at 2200, for a ratio of 0.33.

0: https://www.cruisewatch.com/cruise-ships/caribbean-princess/...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oasis_of_the_Seas

There are at least 26 Royal Caribbean vessels on that list--they are the ones ending in "of the Seas".

Harmony of the Seas can handle almost 5500 passengers and 2400 crew.

Ouch, I completely misremembered their naming scheme then...

Thank you for quickly acknowledging and fixing it--a simple error anyone could make. It also appears you are right that my claim of >.4 is too high. Browsing the listings, it looks like .3 is probably closer.

I think I got things mixed up with Carnival, which does have a naming convention of "Carnival *". Either way, finding the actual ship on wikipedia and calculating from there is going to be better than extrapolating from other ships on the list. (And the post now does that)

Interesting to compare with the valley. Google food and drink cost per employee per day was around $16 when I last heard. Dropbox was the highest around $60, although this was a few years ago.

$1 million is just for supplies. It doesn't account for labor and other expenses.

Cruises are generally feeding each passenger 3+ meals per day though. And people tend to overeat on vacation as well.

How many meals does the average tech employee eat at work per day? My initial guess would be around 1.5, with the biggest meal of the day, dinner, usually being eaten outside of work. That would mean google spends more than twice as much per meal than cruises do.

Where did you find $16 per employee for Google? I'd like to read more about this.

$60 per employee per day on food?! You could give everyone a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a fillet steak every day for that.

That's not TOO far an exaggeration from reality

Plus crew...

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