In the Netherlands, meals and other benefits provided by the employer are taxed into oblivion after a certain amount. It makes a lot of financial sense to just give your employees more money here and let them buy their own stuff after income tax. The way it works is that a company can spend 1.2% of the yearly income on the employee in terms of coffee, company retreats, free lunches, whatever they please, but over that you pay a huge tax rate which make the expense slightly higher than an employee buying it themselves after income tax. Some things are exempt from this, such as free fruit.<p>In practice this means that the cheaper things, such as coffee and tea are usually free (at least in offices with white collar workers) and the more expensive things such as dinner are usually not employer provided. Company provided lunch does exist, and seems to be on the rise, but due to the spartan nature of Dutch lunch, companies are usually able to squeeze that in the 1.2% given that the yearly salaries are high enough. It seems to me that all of this is quite a nice compromise between employers running your life and you thus being limited in your choices, while still offering free coffee and the like.<p>Edit: misremembered the amount, changed 1.8 to 1.2%
The article talks about free food. But the most bizarre perk is how health insurance is linked to one's employer. Whatever system we have in 20 years, pretty much anything will be better than this one.
Article misses an important point. Free food is a benefit, and ERISA requires all employees get the same benefits. If you have a company with lots of low paid workers, it doesn’t work financially. Silicon Valley firms mostly contract out low wage jobs (janitorial, security) partially for this reason.
> Free lunch, though, is not where the action is: the economics of free food are driven by free dinner. Lunch just amortizes the fixed cost of food prep facilities.<p>The Google SF office had lunch, but not dinner, for 10 years. Dinner is a fairly recent offering.
Just started a new job that offers the breakfast/lunch/dinner perks. There are several aspects to it.<p>Retention:<p>* obviously, if the competition doesn't offer lunch, you want to go there<p>* obviously, if the competition offers lunch and your company doesn't, you will want to leave the company<p>* building a community starts with breaking bread. If you can get friendships and relationships to form via this mechanism then you will have a stronger retention, stronger ties between coworkers, etc.<p>cross-pollinating:<p>* grabbing lunch with someone else in the company is easier<p>Team:<p>* go grab lunch with coworkers to know what they're working on<p>* free lunch = better moral for the team<p>* you save time looking for lunch, so you can spend more time eating with your coworker<p>* since you all eat at the same place you randomly bump into coworkers, you often eat with them, etc.<p>Life outside of work:<p>* you can go earlier at work since they serve breakfast<p>* if you can bring food home, you don't have to lose time meal prep'ing and can spend more time doing other things
I'm not sure, if it's really the free part. I had free food at a previous employer and loved it, but a company cafeteria with high-quality food, fast service and acceptable prices serves the same purpose. And every single company cafeteria I ate in so far had same or better quality food with more options. The important thing is that there is an easily available place for good food.<p>Big corps in Germany (and probably all around the world) usually offer that, while small companies for obvious reasons cannot afford it.
> <i>At a minimum, it saves a little bit of search time and wait time. If you were going to work until 10, dinner that takes five minutes rather than thirty still saves you five minutes.</i><p>Am I the only one who doesn't understand this math? Isn't 30 - 5 = 25?
If it stops people eating lunch at their desk, I'm all for it. I've started timing my lunches to coincide with some people near me so I don't have to experience them eating lunch at their desks.
I disagree with pretty much everything in this article. I've never been happier than when I worked for a company that provided free, daily, healthy lunches. We were never coerced into working through dinner.<p>Now I have to food prep dinner and lunch. I'm making 4x the portions just so we each have enough to eat for leftovers. I spend way more of my personal time cooking and doing groceries and not with my family or working on my projects. Food waste has skyrocketed since everything is bought in bulk, and sometimes not all of it gets used. It's created way more dishes too, in meal prep and tupperwares.<p>Sometimes we ate out the night before, or there are just no leftovers. I can either get unhealthy fast food, wait an hour to get served at a healthy place, or spend even more of my limited personal time preparing a meal for the next day.
The tax position of benefits varies by country. Australia, for example, has the Fringe Benefits Tax, which is a tax on benefits levied on the <i>employer</i> at the highest marginal tax rate.<p>Unsurprisingly, Australian workplaces are miserly. At my last job before moving to the US, there was a hot water dispenser installed in the staff room. But we, the employees, had to buy for coffee, tea, sugar and milk ourselves. It was achieved on an honour system, with a little container where you would throw in some cash from time to time.
I used to work in a company that gave free food and I'd choose that even if they offered to pay me 15 dollars per meal (B, L, D) for every weekday instead. There is just such a massive emotional value to having free food all around the office. It was a sad sad day when I left that job.
My most memorable experiences at Google were perks like the invited talks (I got to have a very long chat with author of the Moose Wood Cookbook Molly Katzen and a short chat about Reddit dropping Common Lisp with Alexis Ohanian) and the interesting food at 28 cafes. The work was OK, I just did one specific thing - not much freedom, but my main great memories were the perks.<p>Another great perk was the invited chefs from local restaurants who would be guest chefs, and they would be available to talk with.