It’s funny how impressed people are by food and beverages. Let’s be super conservative and say it was only for a mere 20 people. What percentage of wages do you think is being spent on that stuff?
Let me give you a hint - if the existence of snacks made people work a mere 20 minutes more a week it would’ve already paid for itself. The calculus is a bit more complicated for full service lunch, but you get the idea.
I don't think it's the literal spending money on snacks that impresses people; it's more about the thought behind doing that.
For example I work in a company where the salary is pretty good, but they're also super stingy in general. No snacks, no socials, shitty laptop, etc. It betrays a lack of interest in making employees happy.
The absence of things like snacks is also an indication of how much the bean counters are in charge, because as you say it's probably good value for money in terms of morale, but as soon as the bean counters come in they see you spending £1k/month on snacks or coffee or whatever and that's an easy thing to cut.
Not only that, but if the company once had these things, and then took them away, it might be the wake-up call that snaps an otherwise satisfied employee out of his complacency and cause him to start looking around where the grass might be greener. Steve Blank wrote about this in [1]. Congratulations, you saved a couple of hundred dollars but caused three good employees to leave.
Yeah free food is a really good way to spend money on your employees. Just the cost of people walking to get food makes it worthwhile to provide on site.
I worked at place before that didn't have coffee so people would walk to the coffee place in groups that took 15-30 minutes. Sometimes twice a day. It became a routine part of the day, everyday.
Like literally throwing the cost of an invisible bag of Starbucks beans in the garbage everyday to save the visible cost of brewing a few cups.
Let me give you a hint - if the existence of snacks made people work a mere 20 minutes more a week it would’ve already paid for itself. The calculus is a bit more complicated for full service lunch, but you get the idea.