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%