Monday, April 21, 2014

Benefits for Rakuten Employees: The Rakuten Cafeteria (楽天食堂)

楽天食堂

One of the many benefits you receive as a Rakuten employee is the chance to enjoy free breakfast and lunch in one of Rakuten's two cafeterias every day. Since work usually starts at 9:30 (exempt for Tuesdays with the morning Asakai at 8:00) it is advisable to get to the office at around 8:30 for a nice breakfast before work (if you like washoku).

During breakfast

Not that many people there during breakfast, but it sure gets crowded later during lunch hours

The breakfast menu usually doesn't change that much day by day, but the cafeteria offers quite a wide variety of dishes for lunch. I personally think the food is pretty delicious (I'm not the right person to ask about taste though, I'm generally not very picky about my food as long as it is healthy)! You get to choose between 5 main items that change every day, and in addition to that you have some optional small dishes to choose from as well.

Example of lunch

Fish, potatoes and eggplant

The food is quite healthy, you do for instance always get the opportunity to have fresh vegetables and/or salad with your main dish. In addition to the main dish we also get a small dessert (usually jelly or yogurt).

Lunch + yogurt for dessert

Healthy salad

Meat

If you are tired after work and don't want to go out of your way to get a healthy dinner you could always stop by one of Rakuten's cafeterias. A dinner at the cafeteria usually costs around 380-400 yen, so there is really no need for you to cook your own food at all..

Hamburger

Of course, with such a huge company as Rakuten just one cafeteria isn't quite enough to serve all the employees, and so there are two different Rakuten cafeterias, one in each tower. If you enter the company through the Business/Engineering New Grads group you'll probably find yourself in the cafeteria in Tower 2 most of the time during your initial training period. Still, there is not that much difference between the two cafeterias (I haven't really used the cafeteria in Tower 1 more than once though, so I can't say for sure). The only significant difference I've noticed so far is that the cafeteria in tower 1 has a Tully's Coffee and the one in tower 2 has a regular Rakuten Cafe.

Rakuten Coffee

So far the food at the cafeteria has been great! Thanks to the variety I don't think I'll get tired of the food here anytime soon. Besides, less time cooking means more time doing other things, so it's not a bad idea to eat at the cafeteria as much as possible... ^^

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About Anette
Anette came to Japan as an exchange student in 2010, met the love of her life and got stuck. From her base in Tokyo she writes about her experiences as a full-time worker in Tokyo and about her travels in Japan and abroad. She's a free-spirited adventurer who enjoys both the great outdoors and her urban lifestyle.