Recently joined a company with legit soda machines(the fancy ones with exotic stuff like cream sodas), slim jims, ice cream, cookies, cakes and which buys lunch for the engineers every weekend. It's amazing. I came from a place where you had to pay 2 $ for a soda!
It's definitely one of the things that you don't realize when you don't have it, but when you do it's like heaven. It's really helped me get more work done since I can snack away and it encourages me to get up for walks around the office.
Eh, there's a downside to freebies, which is curation.
No matter how luxurious and all-encompassing, your free corporate fridges are not the supermarket, your free corporate cafeterias are not an east coast diner. They don't have everything you might want, just a decent selection.
We're deep in first world problems here, but there's a certain frustration to always drinking the drink that doesn't quite hit the spot, to searching the cafeteria menu for the least bad menu option. At least when you are paying the money yourself in the wider world, you can actually pick what you want.
Years ago (like, 1993 or so), our college CS class visited Jones Farm. One of the stops on the tour was a break room. All of the drinks were free at the time, whether it was coffee or coca cola. One of the engineers there remarked that at Microsoft only the caffeinated drinks were free. LOL. I just about believe it.
Contractors don't get perks like that anywhere, thanks to Vizcaino v. Microsoft. Withholding resources afforded to permanent employees is weird and counterintuitive, but it's how employers demonstrate compliance.
It never bothered me that much, but when I joined a company with freebies, it was like a breath of fresh air.