Charlie Ayers

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Charlie Ayers is the former executive chef for Google. His work there was widely publicized in the media, and David Vise's corporate history The Google Story contains an entire chapter about him called "Charlie's Place." By the time he left Google in 2006, Ayers and his team of five chefs and 150 employees were serving 4,000 daily lunches and dinners in 10 cafes across the company's headquarters campus in Mountain View, CA. According to his web page bio, Ayers has cooked for Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Mikhail Gorbachev, Queen Noor of Jordan, Bono & The Edge, Coldplay & Gwyneth Paltrow, Robin Williams, Sultan of Brunei, and many of CEO's of Silicon Valley and the high tech world.

Ayers began his professional career in New Jersey working for Hilton Hotels, at their Meadowlands; Parsippany locations in New Jersey. Later he left Hilton to attend culinary school in Providence, RI at Johnson & Wales University. He cooked at several restaurants in the Providence and Boston areas, before moving to California and serving as a chef for the Grateful Dead.

He recently started Calafia Café / Calafia Market a Go Go. Calafia's stated goal is "to provide healthful artisan style hand crafted sustainable cuisine accessible to the greater public in a fast and affordable format." The first restaurant is scheduled to open in May 2008 in the Palo Alto, CA Town & Country Village shopping center.

Ayers also consults with companies to restructure their corporate food service program, including designing Micro Kitchens, and developing a desired corporate culture. He also provides private small cooking classes and cooks for dinner parties.

Ayers lives on the San Francisco Peninsula near Stanford University, south of San Francisco with his wife Kimberly and their son Chance. He is also working on his first cookbook, Food 2.0, which will be a collection of Smart Recipes due out in the spring of 2008.

He works with several charities such as Rex Foundation, Adolescents Counseling Services, American Bechcet's Disease Association, Headlands Center for the Arts, The International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association, HaydensHope.com, and Kiva.org, and sits as a council chef for Cat Cora's foundation, ChefsForHumanity.Org.