A Community Banana Stand is a fruit stand operated by the American company Amazon around its Seattle headquarters and Arlington headquarters, offering free bananas to passersby. Originally proposed by then-CEO Jeff Bezos, the first Community Banana Stand opened in South Lake Union in December 2015. [1]
The stands are open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3:30 pm, providing bananas to employees and non-employees alike. [2] Stand attendants, known as "banistas", oversee the distribution of around 8,000 bananas per day at its two wooden carts, supervised by so-called "bananagers" who keep track of demand. [3] Banistas sometimes offer up trivia facts about bananas, such as the proper term for a bunch of bananas (a hand). [3] Having previously considered oranges and apples, Amazon decided to go with bananas as they require no washing or extra packaging, with each stand providing a compost bin for peels. Visitors have requested a greater variety of fruit, but Amazon has demurred due to the high cost of other fruits. [3]
Community feedback has been mixed. Most employees have a favorable view of the stands, though some have complained that it is difficult to find bananas for purchase at nearby grocery stores. A local vegetarian café, which offers sliced banana as a yogurt topping for $1, has seen demand for the topping plummet. Canadian chain restaurant Local Public Eatery has complained about the manners of certain customers at its Seattle location, who often bring in bananas to eat and leave behind the peels. [3] Some have viewed the initiative as an attempt by Amazon to clean up its image after criticism of the company's culture and relative lack of employee perks compared to other tech companies. [2]
The Seattle stands were closed in March 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic after Amazon adopted remote work for its headquarters employees. [4] They reopened the following year after employees were allowed to return to the headquarters campus. [5]
Outside of Seattle, Amazon opened a temporary banana stand for the duration of CES 2019 in Las Vegas, in the midst of making several major product announcements at the trade show. [6] In early 2022, Amazon opened a second Community Banana Stand in Arlington, Virginia at its HQ2 location. [7]
Lower Queen Anne is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, at the base of Queen Anne Hill. While its boundaries are not precise, the toponym usually refers to the shopping, office, and residential districts to the north and west of Seattle Center. The neighborhood is connected to Upper Queen Anne—the shopping district at the top of the hill—by an extremely steep section of Queen Anne Avenue N. known as the Counterbalance, in memory of the cable cars that once ran up and down it.
Amazon Fresh is a subsidiary of the American e-commerce company Amazon in Seattle, Washington. It is a grocery retailer with physical stores and delivery services in most major U.S. cities, as well as some international cities, such as Berlin, Hamburg, London, Milan, Munich, Rome, Tokyo, and some other locations in Singapore and India. In 2020, Amazon Fresh opened several physical stores in the United States and the United Kingdom. The first store opened in the Los Angeles area, followed by the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and other areas.
Urbanspoon was a restaurant information and recommendation service founded in 2006 by former Jobster employees that offered its services in North America and parts of English-speaking Australasia and Europe. In January 2015, Zomato, an India-based restaurant search and discovery service, acquired Urbanspoon.
Twilio is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.
The Microsoft campus is the corporate headquarters of Microsoft Corporation, located in Redmond, Washington, United States, a part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, shortly before going public on March 13. The headquarters has undergone multiple expansions since its establishment and is presently estimated to encompass over 8 million square feet (740,000 m2) of office space and have over 50,000 employees.
Panopto is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Panopto provides software primarily for universities and enterprise businesses. Panopto's software is commonly used for lecture recording, screencasting, video streaming, and as video content management software, and is often used in remote work, e-learning, and corporate Training and development environments. The company was founded as a spinout of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2007 by two of its professors—William Guttman and William Scherlis—in addition to former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Eric Burns and serial entrepreneur Brad Winney.
Munchery Inc. was an online food ordering and meal delivery service that served parts of San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City. The company shut down abruptly on January 21, 2019. It was valued at $300 million. The website currently relaunched as a recipes-only website.
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Day 1, also known as Amazon Tower II and Rufus 2.0 Block 19, is a 521-foot-tall (159 m) office building in the Denny Triangle neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, located at the intersection of Lenora Street and 7th Avenue. It is part of the three-tower complex that serves as the headquarters of Amazon. The name "Day 1" previously belonged to two buildings on Amazon's South Lake Union campus, but both structures have since been renamed. The building's east facade features a large sign reading "Hello World". The construction project was the most expensive in the city to finish in 2016 amidst the recent downtown housing boom.
Amazon Go is a chain of convenience stores in the United States and the United Kingdom, operated by the online retailer Amazon. The stores are cashierless, thus partially automated, with customers able to purchase products without being checked out by a cashier or using a self-checkout station. As of 2023, there are 43 open and announced store locations in Seattle, Chicago, London and New York City.
Qualtrics Tower, formerly known as 2+U and 2&U, is a high-rise office building in Downtown Seattle, Washington. The 500-foot-tall (150 m), 38-story tower is located at 2nd Avenue and University Street and was completed in 2020. The building has 725,000 square feet (67,400 m2) of leasable space, including retail and public spaces on the lower levels. The largest office tenant is Qualtrics, who also hold the naming rights to the building.
A street vacation, also known as an alley vacation or vacation of public access, is a type of easement in which a government transfers the right-of-way of a public street, highway or alley to a private property owner. The process, which varies between cities and states in the United States, is often used for large-scale real estate development, where alleys cutting through city blocks are closed for a large building. City laws may require public benefits and other types of compensation in exchange for the approval of a street vacation.
Amazon HQ2 is Amazon's corporate headquarters in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia and is an expansion of the company's headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Phase I, which has capacity for 14,000 employees, opened in June 2023. Construction on Phase II is delayed and there is no timeline for development.
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Amazon is an American multinational technology company which focuses on e-commerce, cloud computing, and digital streaming. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world", and is one of the world's most valuable brands.
Lighter Capital is a revenue-based financing lender that specializes in providing financial capital to small technology companies.
Qumulo is an American data storage company based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 2012, it offers products and services to help other companies manage and curate large amounts of data.
Maren Costa is an American user experience designer and environmentalist. She is known for co-founding Amazon Employees For Climate Justice and for being illegally terminated by her former employer, Amazon. She is a principal designer at Microsoft.
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