Taxes are high enough (especially on high income employees) that if the employer can count it as an expense, and it doesn't count as employee income, then it's worth providing as long as the employee would be willing pay ~60% of its cost from their post-tax income. Factor in bulk discounts and the figure is more like 50%.
Unfortunately, the debate on payroll/income taxation never really addresses such distortions, and gets stuck on "come on, an extra 10% isn't as big a deal for you".
probably because the pool of candidates for positions that imply better wage is much smaller and it's harder to find and recruit a candidate, so such small things like free beer and snacks become more important?
ps also, most likely wage of those making the least in the company has no correlation to goods such as free food etc.
This applies to tech companies more widely. Would you take less snacks, less free beer, less hiring gimmick benefits to increase the wages of those making the least at your company?