It benefits neither the company nor the candidate to have the candidate be overly stressed out all day. Lunch also gives the candidate the chance to chat informally to a potential colleague and for that potential colleague to make a pitch for why it's cool to work at the company and live in the area. If the lunch buddy does their job well the candidate should leave excited to work for the company and in good spirits for the last half of the interview. On top of that both people get a free lunch. Definitely not a waste of time.

Agreed. About half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

I think it is worth it to the company for me to spend the 5 extra minutes of my time (since I'm going to eat lunch anyway) and $25 on lunch to defuse those concerns and sell them on the team. With the phone screen, the interviews, the feedback forms and the debrief, the company is spending a ton of time on each candidate brought on site. Loosing a candidate you make an offer to is the worst waste of time.

> half the candidates I take out to lunch in some way ask "is working here as stressful as the rumors say?"

And what do you tell them / what do you think?

Yup, just like letting your employees eat during work hours is "wasting employees' time"... They have to eat anyway!