At his peak, Ayers and a team of 150 employees and five chefs served about 4,000 meals a day across 10 cafes in the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. It has been reported that Ayers earned $26 million from his Google stock options. He started out working for Hilton Hotels in New Jersey and then studied at Johnson & Wales University. Ayers was a chef at many restaurants and was even a chef for the Grateful Dead in California. In 2009 he opened Calafia Café / Calafia Market a Go Go in Palo Alto, California which operated until 2018.
Google Jackpot: Before joining Google, Charlie worked as a backstage chef at music festivals. Through this gig he was periodically hired to prepare meals for touring bands, most notably the Grateful Dead. Charlie moved to the Bay Area to be closer to the Dead. In 1999 he decided to give up life on the road to become the corporate chef for a tiny internet startup called Google. He was employee #56. At the time Google was generating just $220,000 per year in revenue. Charlie was given 40,000 shares in Google that were worth $3.4 million on the day of the company's IPO. Charlie left Google in 2005. By 2007, after dividends and stock splits, Charlie's shares were worth $26 million. Had he held them for another decade they would have been worth as much as $50 million.
After leaving Google Charlie wrote a best-selling cookbook and consulted for several top tech firms.
