Is Free Food in the Office Here to Stay?
An office is only as good as its free snacks. Or meals, in many cases.
“In 1999, Google was a little start-up, just like we are. And when they started bringing in chefs and masseuses, we thought, ‘They’re nuts!’ But they were attracting the best possible people, and they were able to create the best product, and now they’re worth over $400 billion,” says fictional CEO Jack Barker on a recent episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley. The offices of the TV show’s imaginary Pied Piper company are a hyperbole depicting the current perk culture at trendy start-ups: made-to-order morning waffles, expensive organic coconut water, and a constant stream of meals and snacks to feed employees and keep them working. It’s fuel, essentially, an investment in productivity and therefore bigger business and greater profits. But when the nine-to-five workday extends long beyond five, and the hours-long, multicourse power lunches are gone, food also becomes essential in creating an enjoyable workplace.
It’s no secret that Google has phenomenal cafeterias, inviting guest chefs to feed employees on the company’s tab, along with a slew of other tasty perks. BuzzFeed, which declined to take part in this article, is known for the blowout bonanzas it throws for employees, including a recent Pride party sponsored by Svedka vodka, which culminated in a celebrity performance by RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bianca Del Rio. And Zappos has a bistro for its employees (Zapponians, in company parlance) that serves a mix of free and low-cost dishes for three meals a day, plus an on-site coffee shop with complimentary salads and sandwiches for workers in a rush. The Las Vegas–based company even offers a 2.5-hour, $100 “Chow and Wow” tour for visitors, so they can taste the delicacies employees are treated to each day.
Not every work environment can match what those three giants provide. Still, more and more, it seems that a sad office vending machine stocked with Baked Lay’s and Nutter Butters isn’t going to lure in millennial employees. Complimentary cold brew on tap? Maybe. That notion seems to be supported by a recent (though small) survey, conducted by ORC International for the grocery delivery service Peapod, that found a correlation between free food at the office and employees’ happiness with their jobs. Workers aged 18 to 34 seemed to particularly value edible office perks.
Jenna Rodriguez has personal experience with the benefits of in-office catering, though from the other side of the serving line. Rodriguez left a traditional corporate role at Indeed.com after enrolling in culinary school at New York’s Natural Gourmet Institute, opting to follow her passion for food and nutrition as a full-time career. Now founder, head chef, and one-woman show at her company, RTF Catering, Rodriguez brings a nutritious breakfast to Indeed’s Midtown Manhattan offices every Tuesday morning.
“It’s been by far the most rewarding experience I’ve ever undertaken,” Rodriguez said of her shift to corporate catering. “It makes me feel amazing when people say ‘This is the best breakfast we get all week’ or ‘I’m so glad it’s Tuesday.’” In attempts to align her “health-supportive cooking” with the palates of over 300 breakfast eaters, Rodriguez offers healthier versions of traditional breakfast items — like nitrate-free bacon, breakfast potatoes with the skins on, and homemade doughnuts — along with vegan porridges and creative muffin varieties, like double dark chocolate spinach, or peas and carrot cake.
Rodriguez says that having access to nutritious food “whenever you want it during the day is a great thing,” and she sees employees adjusting their schedules to suit their particular needs. “Not everyone is hungry when they wake up,” she pointed out. Many with rush-hour commutes may skip breakfast entirely, and having the option to eat after settling in at work may be healthier than either downing a preemptive meal before you want it or going hungry until lunchtime.
Chicago-based Fooda serves as an intermediary between restaurants and corporations, organizing catering from local businesses to local offices for up to three meals a day, every day. Kelly Treser, a Fooda account executive, explains that some of her clients need catering for a monthly lunch meeting, while others receive daily orders, ranging from avocado baskets to bubblegum and soda to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“It creates an environment for people where they feel like they’re at home,” Treser said of companies bringing food into the workplace. She also believes it will become less of a perk and more of a standard practice as time goes by. “A year ago, we didn’t have daily clients, and now we do,” she said. “I think that [company-provided food] will one day become a necessity in the workplace.”
Jason Gotlieb, who works as a software engineer at TripAdvisor in Boston, takes advantage of his office’s free lunch nearly every day. The company treats employees (and occasional guests) to a cafeteria packed with options: a salad bar and sandwich bar; rotating selections of grilled food, pizza, tacos, or rice bowls; a pasta station; infused water; juices; and more. “It’s pretty sweet,” Gotlieb said, adding that he likes not having to debate where to go for lunch and the ease of eating with his coworkers. “I like working [at TripAdvisor] for other reasons, but I can certainly appreciate and enjoy the free lunch. It’s a nice perk.”
Employees I spoke to with in-office food seemed to agree that the time saved through convenient meals and snacks was the biggest benefit of all. And from a company’s standpoint, those time savings clearly make workers more efficient — as they say, time is money. Steven Allen, a campus program manager at Zappos, says that his edible perks help him stay productive throughout the day. “I can grab a soda or coffee if I need a quick energy boost, grab a quick snack between meals, and I don’t have to worry about all of the time wasted walking or driving to off-site restaurants,” he said.
Despite all the obvious benefits of free food — sustenance, variety, an opportunity to socialize in the office — it hardly needs to be said that never having to leave your desk to eat can easily turn into, well, never leaving your desk.
Treser worked with a client that provided free dinners to its employees each night, and she speculated that the complimentary meal “might give people initiative to stick around and get more work done” rather than head home at dinnertime. The outstanding question is whether that’s a good thing for morale, or whether it could hasten the pace of burnout.
Other employees, while generally enthusiastic about company-provided food, express concern about weight gain or sugar crashes from mid-afternoon snacking. A Wall Street Journal article from June of this year suggested that employers create distance between work stations and snack or beverage stores, and improve the visibility of healthier options, as Google has done.
What’s not in doubt is the fact that where there’s free food, people (especially young people) flock. And companies hoping to attract and retain quality staff, and keep them working long hours, are likely to only increase their reliance on edible office perks to do so.
