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> 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.

The Google SF office had lunch, but not dinner, for 10 years. Dinner is a fairly recent offering.

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free lunch is also good economically though, without free lunch most employees spend 1+ hours outside the company.

With free lunch, most employee spend less than 25 minutes eating, then going back directly to work.

I definitely understand why they do it; just providing a counterpoint to "they only lunch so they can dinner."

That's been the exact opposite of my experience. It was an uphill battle to get dinner at Google, so there were plenty of nights where the reason I left was "I have to get home before my food options close."

There are relatively few people actually getting dinner at my office, even though it is offered four days a week. Perhaps an order of magnitude fewer than those getting lunch.

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