Ask HN: How do you price for free lunches and dinners at the workplace?

Frankly, I don&#x27;t even look at them at all. Snacks are a nice-to-have and shouldn&#x27;t be a selling perk and a 1x week team lunch can be a good way to build morale and camaraderie in the company, but again, not mandatory. What matters is work expectations, compensation, team, culture fit, other compensation, salary, etc. Not the freebies that might get pushed to distract you from other things you need to consider.<p>I get worried when people really push the free perks like breakfast&#x2F;lunch&#x2F;dinner every day. That, to me, says the corporate culture will expect you to work longer hours (for probably less take home pay) in exchange for feeding you. The food may not even be that good or healthy for you. Frankly, while I like my coworkers, I value having a life outside the office with friends and family and would be extremely leery about any job that asked me to spend the significant majority of my waking time working outside the usual 40hrs&#x2F;week.<p>Value wise, ask them for their per-diem rate or what they budget for lunches&#x2F;dinners to evaluate.<p>Lunch, depending on your organization&#x2F;per-diem rates in the area, usually fluctuates between $10-20 and dinners between $20-50 depending on organization, expectations, restaurants in the area, etc.<p>Then figure out what the difference in salary is, knowing you could make lunches and dinners on your own for between $5-10 ea that are guaranteed to be fresh and nutritious. Odds are, you&#x27;re going to be losing more money getting the &quot;free&quot; lunches&#x2F;dinners than you get back in their dollar value<i>.<p></i> Yes, you can argue there&#x27;s a time tradeoff for buying and cooking, but if you do it smart, you can get this down to once a week in a batch trip at a prescheduled time.

Probably view it as a negative signal. If it’s a startup, and the revenue has flat lined for the last two quarters, making most peoples stock worthless, and all your team mates talk about is how the gourmet catered lunch isn’t as good as their friends’ lunches at Uber and AirBnb, well you get what you hire for.<p>If you’re thinking too much about lunch, you’re probably thinking about the wrong stuff. Which company has the better team, the better leader, the better market opportunities, the better product, the better learning experience, the better professional growth potential, the better lifestyle, the better equity, and so on. A lot of things should be way farther up on the list than what’s for lunch. Don’t let the frivolous tricks to trap you in the office distract you from the things that really matter.

Lunch: like anything else. How much will it save you? That depends on how much you would otherwise spend on lunch (hint, not $20). Even with free lunch, you will sometimes want to get out of the office anyway, so don&#x27;t count it at a full 5x&#x2F;week. Note: there are 52 weeks&#x2F;year (not 48), subtract vacation.<p>Dinner is more complicated. Yes, you can do a straight calculation like for lunch. But free dinner is only a benefit if you assume you are going to be at the office at dinner time. I go home and have dinner with my family. That they offer it could be a red flag that you&#x27;ll be expected to work long hours.

The correct way to evaluate such offers is to ignore them.

$20? Have you never taken lunch to work in your life?