Airlines are desperate to jettison their excess snacks

Airlines have a simple message for Americans: You don’t have to take our flights, but please, please, at least take our snacks.

Across the US, delivery companies are shuttling surplus airline snacks into people’s homes.

There’s a lot to go around: Delta, for instance, hands out 80m+ of its famed Biscoff cookies every year. With air travel taking a nosedive, it donated 500k pounds of snacks to food banks and frontline workers.

Meanwhile, United is heaping stroopwafels on anyone who will take them. JetBlue partnered with the surplus food company Imperfect Foods to offer assorted cheeses, cherries, and crackers for $2.99 a pack.

The future of the corporate snack game could be nuts

Some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley are luring employees with promises of snacks as far as the eye can see.

One catering company estimated that offices can spend as much as ~$200k on snacks for 100 people. The most popular “guilty” snack, according to ZeroCater: animal crackers.

But with few tech workers going in for work these days, a lot of startups are rethinking their snack offerings altogether.

The tech-snack reformation

Marker noted that a few companies are sending their employees “home office kits” that feature the regular assortment of office munchies.

Others are dialing back on snacks: Googlers were recently hit with the news that they can’t expense food and other perks while in quarantine. Also a no-no: spending unused travel or event budgets on snack boxes or gifts.

If we do see a snack-perk renaissance later in the year, it isn’t going to look as appetizing as before. Instead of tables sprawling with free-flowing bags of popcorn and M&Ms, workers might have to settle for individually wrapped packages of almonds.