Bosses are luring people back to the office with the promise of free food

The old saying goes, “the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach,” and executives take this very literally.

I love my job, my colleagues, and my company. I’m very lucky, as I look forward to coming into work, even to the office, despite the two work-from-home days available.

But what makes the whole experience a little sweeter is the pastries we are given every Friday.

However, this Friday was different. There were no buns and people weren’t best pleased.

That’s the problem when your boss provides food to keep you in the office, and for whatever reason, the promise isn’t fulfilled.

More and more companies are employing this sneaky yet effective tactic to keep their employees in the office.

No one can turn down a good meal.

Business Insider spoke to Sendbird, an artificial intelligence customer platform, about how it keeps its employees happy and in attendance.

Similar to our company, Sendbird created a “tradition” of providing its employees with a free lunch every Friday.

Sendbird’s chief of staff, Yeji Yoon, told Business Insider that this tradition was started for “selfish” reasons.

This is because employees are expected to be in the office on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, not Friday.

However, as people found it easier to collaborate on Friday, the company's chief financial officer would ask if they wanted a Vietnamese sandwich called a Bahn Mi.

Now, the company has a Slack channel dedicated to lunch Fridays.

While the benefits of remote work have been recorded, many companies, particularly tech companies, are doing whatever they can to keep their employees in the office.

Yoon told Business Insider that AI is quickly changing the way we work, and is making it all the more important to collaborate with colleagues in person.

"Now, especially with AI, where everything is changing so quickly, products are changing so quickly, customers' expectations are changing really quickly – nobody really knows how fast everything is changing. They don't really understand it. There's a lot of collaboration that has to happen on the go," Yoon told Business Insider.

While companies should fulfil their promises if they offer hybrid work environments, the way to a person’s heart is indeed through their stomach.

As evidenced by broken hearts when the company misses pastry Friday.