Hedge funds' new competitive edge: copious free food

If you work for a hedge fund, you might feel the pressure to have some kind of warrior physique - particularly if you're trying to channel George Soros and work well past your fifth decade. However, you will also need to have pretty strong self-control: most big hedge funds now reward their employees with food, and lots of it.

At Citadel, for example, the food starts with a complimentary breakfast and flows on to a complimentary lunch, supplemented by snacks throughout the day. At Point72, employees describe a "wonderful pantry of free food and drinks." At Bridgewater there's free lunch, snacks, and dinner for those working past 7pm. And at Two Sigma there are "tons of snacks," if not actual full meals.

Nor is it just food. Hedge funds are busy wooing staff with free drinks too. None have got a WeWork beer tap (as far as we know) but Two Sigma offers kombucha and Point72 is said to have six different varieties of fresh brew coffee.

In this sense, hedge funds are similar to technology firms like Facebook and Google, which cater so fully for employees' alimentary needs that there's almost no need for staff to feed themselves. Banks, by comparison, are far behind in the free food stakes. Goldman Sachs offers free-flowing kombucha to technologists in San Francisco, but that's about as far as it goes. 

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