To give them enough money to buy that $30 meal as a personal expense, you need to pay them around $50 in marginal comp expenses.

It can be a win for both sides for the employees to work an extra 30-90 minutes and have some team bonding and to feel like they’re getting a good deal. (Source: I did this for years at a place that comp’d dinner if you worked more than 8 hours AND past 6 PM; we’d usually get more than half the team staying for the “free” food.)

I have found that the success of things like this depend greatly on so many factors such as office type, location, team moral, management style, individual personalities, even mean age etc.

I have worked in places where the exact opposite of what you describe happens. As OP says, people just stop working at 6 and just start reading reddit or scrolling their phones. No team bonding and chat because everyone is wiped out from a hard day. Just people hanging around, grabbing their food when it arrives, and leaving.

We too had more than half the team staying for the “free” food, but they definitely didnt do much work whilst they were there.