Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by drewcoo 1477 days ago
> What part of "free soda doesn't scale" is irrational?

All of it.

Free soda for 10 people is hard. They have different tastes. There are too many things to keep enough refrigerated at the same time to make sure you hit soda rush times of the day. And you're probably running to a local grocery store, at least sometimes, to make sure you don't run out.

With 100 people, you've probably settled into something more standardized, no more special Puerto Rican pineapple soda for that one person with the interesting tastes. Everything can be delivered by the same one or two vendors. You know roughly how much you need and when - much more predictable. And you have more fridges now, constantly stocked with more soda. Moreover, the free soda now costs less per person.

Etc.

1 comments

The only problem with free soda for a big corp is that people are more likely to take the mick and take more than their fair share, as they’re less likely to feel obligated to the company to be reasonable.
> more than their fair share

There's no such thing.

There's a fairly low natural limit to how much soda one human can drink. Yes if they're dragging pallets out to resell on the street that might be an issue - an issue of the company not paying enough such that hocking loose cans is worth it for their employees.