Free food is the best. It's actually a really strong incentive to get employees to stay at work longer, and who doesn't like free food? Now it is becoming more and more of a standard perk at startups which is a great thing!
> I figure that any company that offers free food woudl be willing to listen to employee suggestions.
Listening to, and stocking based on, employee suggestions isn't enough. You have to provide the food that I want, even if I'm the only one who wants it.
Stocking based on employee suggestions will miss about 10-15% of the employees.
Yes, I understand why that is, and I'm not suggesting that companies change, I'm pointing out that it's a problem.
We have fairly healthy food. The signs are all labeled green, yellow, or red to indicate healthfulness and there's salad and vegetables every day. Of course no one is going to stop you from going up for seconds if that's what you want to do, but I've found I eat much healthier at work because it's difficult and time consuming to prepare that variety of food and vegetables for a single person. One of my coworkers lost 60 pounds since starting.
People joke about the Google 15, but I don't know of anyone that actually put on much weight. I ended up putting on 15-20 pounds, but it was muscle mass that I was trying to gain, so I'm not sure that counts.
In most cases, it isn't the food that I'd pick myself and it often leads to weight gain.