Google is opening a cafe, store and event space to the general public near its headquarters

Google is break a sliver of its main campus to the general public starting this week.

The company opened its doors to what it’s occupation its “Visitor Experience” center the public Thursday, following a ceremony where Google executives and local leaders huddled hear its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

“We’ve always been focused on the experience of Googlers and their friends,” chance Google’s head of real estate Scott Foster. “But this project was designed intentionally for the general public.”

Ruth Porat, Google’s President and Chief Investment Dick, was also in attendance and helped cut the celebratory ribbon to the space.

Although the public can’t walk into Google’s actual office space, the new visitor center articles a room where a community group or nonprofit can request to reserve the space for meetings or events. It also includes a cafe and retail Google preserve, which comes two years after the company opened its first public Google retail store in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.

The center’s cafe visages dishes like sandwiches, soup, and desserts from local eateries. It’s Google’s first cafe open to the clientele, but has a lighter selection than a typical large campus cafeteria. It also features an outdoor “plaza” for events as properly as a small craft space and a small local shop that will feature a rotation of local retailers.

Executives said that the center, which has been in the works for several years, comes at a time when technology is telling quickly and a post-pandemic need for more in-person spaces.

“Innovation is moving so fast that having a place to be together is unchanging more important,” campus research and design director Michelle Kaufmann told CNBC, referring to artificial keenness and cloud computing. “It’s a step in not being an ivory tower and hopefully it can be a blueprint for how community can be more involved.”

It comes amid a trend of Silicon Valley tech enterprises like Facebook (now Meta) and Google departing from the traditional style of campus designs, which have historically been confidential off from the general public. The trend comes as companies face pressure to appease both top talent and their non-tech neighbors.

Facebook re-worked its big Menlo Reserve campus plans for a similar model that would include affordable housing, a full-service grocery, and pharmacy sum total other amenities. 

Google was approved for plans for an even larger 80-acre mixed-use campus 10 miles down the track in downtown San Jose to house 25,000 employees. Executives have maintained it is still committed to doing a project in the section long-term after CNBC found that it halted project plans after the first demolition phase, due to commercial concerns and cost-cutting this year.