It's taxable in the US as well.

There have been occasional attempts to enforce the law - IRS recently made noises in 2014/15.

The challenge is that it's taxable to the employees but hard to track and prove, it's for relatively little money per employee, and the firms argue that it's for their benefit to secure information/improve productivity/build cohesion...

Google can and will fight far harder than the IRS is willing to on this issue and the IRS isn't entirely sure that they'd win. The IRS can spend resources in places to make a much higher return with an almost certain chance of success.

So no effective taxes on meals.

To make it happen in your company, follow the Google and Uber strategy. Just do it and deal with the law later.

Your ability to pay any fines later may be different from Google's and the chance that one of your employees will call the tax office on you may be dramatically higher because Germany.