This $1.7 billion tech company doesn't do free lunches - here's where the CEO tells employees to eat

Lots of Silicon Valley startups serve free meals to their employees.

But Zendesk, a $1.7 billion customer service software company, doesn't do free lunches. Its CEO Mikkel Svane wants his employees to eat at local restaurants.

The reason is simple: he believes it will help support the local businesses around his office, which is in San Francisco's rapidly gentrifying Mid-Market district.

"We wanted our people to get out of the office and support the little ground-floor retail businesses that are so important to a neighborhood," he writes in a blog post.

Svane also shared his favorite restaurants around the area. We stopped by each of them to see what it's all about.