A lot of the old-school employers run subsidised cafeterias. Cisco used to, back in the day. Pretty decent choices and reasonable pricing, until they started whittling down options making the cafes pretty unattractive compared to surrounding eateries in Milpitas (this was during the '09 recession). I know that Apple still runs them but they are of course notoriously thrifty (I'm pretty sure they don't subsidise as heavily as others). Same with Yahoo. Not sure if we had to pay, but it was pretty reasonable. Soon after that first recession, I started seeing a trend of catered food at smaller places, and completely in-house operations at the larger places. That trend has kept up until the pandemic struck.
It's good to have the option, it's not what drives my decisions.
I have no problem with people that see it as a bonus, to each his own, it simply doesn't matter much to me.
But maybe SV corporate culture has gone a little bit too far on it.