I reviewed every snack in our office kitchen
This is the silliest piece of content we’ve ever done and when I proposed it, my boss asked me “How can we relate this to our product? How will this get us leads?” And I said “Well the concept is compelling enough and we can just mention it in the beginning”. So please help me justify having done this by booking a demo (or deploying open source) if you’re in the market for a billing system.
Few things are as underrated in the world of gastronomy as the humble office snack. That’s perhaps because it plays by different rules than more common food categories: One might seek novelty on a restaurant menu, but look for familiarity in an office fridge. In a restaurant, eating is the main activity. In an office, it is not.
The design space of good office snacks is different from that of conventional food—and I’m tired of pretending it’s not. That’s why I reviewed every single snack available in our San Francisco office kitchen.
I’ve reviewed them in the following rubric, each out of 5. The rubric only applies to foods present in our office kitchen or that could reasonably be consumed as office snacks. Lobster claws may have incredible taste and horrible logistics, but nobody would consume them during work hours, so this rubric doesn’t apply to them.
Taste
How delicious is the snack? Does it satisfy the tastebuds? This matters for obvious reasons: We want to enjoy the things we eat.
Productivity
How does it affect energy levels in helping me continue to work? Many things are tasty, but will crater our productivity. This doesn’t matter in a restaurant, where you’re going to sleep afterwards, but does matter here.
Logistics
How does it affect the operational efficiency of my workday? An example here are olives: Their wetness makes you unable to use your keyboard without washing your hands. Plus they produce pits, which need to be stored in an additional bowl. I love olives, but their logistics score would be zero.
Social score
How does it portray me to others inside the same office? Foods that cause smells, sounds or seem excessively pretentious get diminished social score. Foods that seem cool and improve your perception get good scores.
Let’s start.
Banana
The banana. The workhorse of office snacks. The reliable, trusty banana. My overall impression of the banana is mildly positive. It doesn’t win any awards, but it’s solid.
Taste
Bananas are tasty, but not incredibly so. They provide familiarity, not novelty, which makes them a great office snack. A solid 3 out of 5.
Productivity
Bananas have both carbohydrates and plenty of fiber. It gave me a subtle boost of energy, but the fiber meant it didn’t lead to a corresponding crash. 4 points.
Logistics
This is where bananas lose some of their points. First, you need to wait for the right ripeness if a fresh batch arrives. An unripe banana is unenjoyable, as is an overripe one.
Additionally, the peel (which browns quickly upon completion of eating) requires an additional trip to the trash can. Bananas are also difficult to eat partially, as one is stuck with an unattractive half-eaten banana on the desk.
Another minor complaint is that bananas are precious cargo and respond to even minor pressure with unenjoyable brown spots.
1 out of 5.
Social score
“Who does that guy think he is, eating bananas and all that?” said no one ever. The social score of the banana is fully neutral. Nobody has ever thought anything of anyone for eating bananas.
3 out of 5
Teriyaki beef jerky
This one is rough to review. I personally love beef jerky, but its core use case is closer to a road trip gas station snack than an accoutrement in the boardroom.
Taste
Look, I like beef jerky. Umami from the beef. Sweetness from teriyaki and you can still taste the soy sauce. It’s good. Texture is a bit too much gummy, but better than the stringiness of bad beef jerky.
4.5/5
Productivity
No effect either way. 5/5 (there is room to argue here. One might say that sometimes, you’re specifically looking for an energy boost, in which case a neutral energy effect would warrant a rating lower than 5)
Logistics
There’s a plastic bag to discard and one of those weird silica gel packets you can’t eat. I rate this 4 out of 5 because it creates plastic trash, but par for the course.
Social score
Look, nobody’s going to tell you eating beef jerky at your laptop job is weird. They’ll definitely note the smell, but won’t find it repugnant enough to tell you off. The social impact is certainly not positive. It’s not reputation-ruining. You don’t get on a watchlist. But you won’t be the hippest person there.
2 out of 5.
Someone else’s lunch
Eating someone else’s lunch is a gambit. A high-risk, high-reward endeavor for the bold. A surprise. One might call it a growth hack of office snacks.
Taste
Hard to rate when you have no idea what you’re getting. This one was some type of salad with vinaigrette. Loved it. 5 out of 5.
Productivity
Pretty good. As it’s a lunch, it did give me an energy boost. It’s a salad, so no crash. But yeah, if someone ordered fried chicken, I guess you’d have a pretty big dip after.
5/5 for this one.
Logistics
Logistics of the food are perfect. First, it generally gets delivered. Second, if you’re lucky, you even have your choice of whose lunch you eat. But the distribution is bimodal here because the massive upside is countered by a massive downside: You need to evade detection. Will you hide in the bathroom? Pretend you ordered the same thing? Eat it at your desk? Either way, you need to be prepared.
5/5
Social score
You’ll either be the weirdo eating lunch in weird places or the lunch thief. Neither makes you look like anything but that person.
-99/5
Mint chocolate protein bar
Protein bars are fine. Chocolate is delicious. So is mint. All together are an abomination.
Taste
I unwrapped the bar, expecting a tasty, low-guilt snack. Sure, it’s coated in chocolate. But protein = healthy, so a protein bar is basically a health bar, meaning I can feel good about it.
But as soon as I took a bite, I knew I was mistaken. The sickly sweetness of the mint combined with a layer of dark chocolate as thick as an electron were a sad container for an even sadder interior substance, the protein-based mass. The interior tasted like a mysterious mass that would be made in a factory canteen behind the iron curtain.
Yes, it contains 20 grams of protein. But at what cost?
0 out of 5
Productivity
Solid. Yes, there’s sugar involved, but it’s sufficiently non-sugary to prevent a sugar crash.
4 out of 5
Logistics
Pretty good. Chocolate didn’t melt on my hands. A wrapper to throw away. Fine.
4 out of 5
Social score
You might look a bit tryhardy if you eat a protein bar, but most people will generally think you’re health-aware and probably work out. It’s a good look.
4 out of 5
All-natural fruit bar
A healthy-looking bar made of strawberry and banana—and a bunch of juice, aka sugar. The ingredients might be natural, but the final result certainly wasn’t.
Taste
The taste is good, almost candy-like. That’s probably because this healthy-looking “all-natural fruit bar” is basically candy. That said, it was good.
5 out of 5
Productivity
It’s candy. Maybe not quite a Snickers bar, but it’s candy.
2 out of 5
Logistics
Looks sticky, but isn’t. 2 bites and you’re done. Just throw away the wrapper.
4 out of 5
Social score
This thing is basically how you make children eat fruit. So eating it as an adult in an office makes you look like someone who didn’t grow up.
2 out of 5.
Grapes
The ultimate office snack that takes the cake.
Taste
Everybody likes grapes. They’re fruity, guilt-free, sweet, delicious. Not too sweet, not too sour. An overall agreeable snack.
5/5
Productivity
The high skin-to-flesh ratio gives grapes comparatively more fiber, making your body digest them better than a more sugary fruit like Mango.
5/5
Logistics
Perfection. You can keep a bunch around and consume them one after another. No half-eaten evidence of prior gluttony remains. No trash is created. The perfect snack.
5/5
Social score
Incredible. Nothing convinces someone else of your competence like throwing a grape into the air mid-sentence and catching it in your mouth. There’s no smell and no unhealthiness for others to judge you on, just overall great vibes.
5/5
Granola bar
The granola bar doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. Does it want to be a healthy snack? Or a tasty relief from a hard day’s work? Right now, it’s neither.
Taste
There’s no taste quite as disappointing as the taste of a “healthy alternative”. It’s the instantaneous sadness one gets when eating a sugarfree cookie.
Sadly, granola bars often taste like healthy alternatives. They’re not quite candy bar, but not quite health food either. They’re in a sad no man’s land between the two.
A mediocre 2 out of 5.
Productivity
Fine, but not great.
3 out of 5
Logistics
Another aspect where the granola bar disappoints. First, it left crumbs on my table, some of which fell between the keys of my annoyingly loud mechanical keyboard. Second, it invariably creates plastic trash which, you guessed it, contains CRUMBS. Those fall on the desk or floor while discarding the plastic trash.
1 out of 5.
Social score
Fine. You think nothing different about someone eating a granola bar. Neither does anyone else.
3 out of. 5
Lemon
We’re committed to exhaustiveness here. It had to be done.
Taste
Very sour. Extremely so.
1/5
Productivity
I certainly felt very awake for a couple of minutes.
5/5
Logistics
You can’t just bite into it, knife required. Squeezing required.
1/5
Social score
If you want to make sure everyone believes you’re a sociopath, go ahead and have a straight up lemon. If not, don’t.
1/5
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