I'm sure the cost of setting up the kitchens (capital expenditure) and the cost of keeping them running (operation expenditure) negate this saving. Are there any published figures?
1. The company can depreciate capital expenditures and deduct their costs from income whereas the employees would not reduce their taxes by doing a kitchen upgrade or going grocery shopping
2. The employees will spend more time at work because the kitchen with free prepared food is there instead of at a restaurant or their house so it technically doesn't even need to break even to be advantageous for the company
1. This reduces the overall cost by some small percentage but I doubt it actually makes it free
2. In theory this is correct, are there any studies that actually show productivity gains for companies in this respect? (I think the real reason for this is because a lot of the valley companies are in the middle of nowhere and therefore it's not really feasible for employees to go looking for food). I recently visited the HQ of my company in Silicon Valley and I was not impressed by how far it was from everything else.
