Lyft's new CEO reversed its WFH policy. Now he says employees should want to come back to the office 'for the snacks.'

• Lyft's CEO says workers who don't want to return to the office should come back — for the snacks.
• He told employees they would need to come into the office three days a week starting in the fall.
• David Risher's mandate is a reversal of the "fully flexible" work policy Lyft instituted in 2022.

Major companies are struggling to lure people back to the office as workers sign petitions to hold onto their flexibility and contend that they're just as productive, if not more, when working from home. 

Lyft's CEO David Risher, however, thinks office snacks should be enough reason enough for employees to head back in.

At a company meeting in April, Risher reversed the "fully flexible" work policy Lyft instituted in March 2022. That policy had allowed almost all employees to live and work from anywhere. Instead, he announced that employees would need to return to the office at least three days a week in the fall, the New York Times reported after the meeting in April.  

And when one employee asked why they would need to return, Risher said "for the snacks in the office," the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing employees who attended the meeting. 

Risher's comments didn't go over too well with employees, however, who rated him poorly on a scale of 1 to 5 following the meeting, the Journal reported. But things must have turned around because now Risher said he was rated well after a more recent meeting in late June, the Journal reported. The company declined to provide exact scores to Insider. 

In a statement to Insider, Risher said: "Lyft brings people together to work, learn, and play together. We've got to walk the walk if we're going to talk the talk."

And while the company declined to provide specifics on its in-office snack offerings, a spokesperson for Lyft added by email that, "We're as serious about building a great experience for our employees as we are for riders and drivers."

The statement continued: "Good food matters, but this is about more than baby carrots with a light dipping sauce. It's about building an engaging, flexible and productive workplace that lets all of us focus on the needs of our customers."

(So that might offer a clue to what one might find in Lyft's office snack bar — though of course the company might also offer much more.)

Lyft's plug for "baby carrots with light dipping sauce" comes as tech companies are paring back their snack and cereal offerings and cutting down on free lunches, too. 

Lyft's return-to-office mandate is one of several changes Risher has enacted since he took the helm as CEO in April.

Shortly after he stepped into the role he laid off 26% of Lyft's workforce, and introduced new features for riders and drivers— changes that have helped the company reclaim some of its market share from Uber, the Journal reported.

The company used the money it saved on payroll cuts, for example, to lower its prices to better compete with Uber, the Journal reported. Risher has also said the company is "doing everything we can" to prepare itself for advances in self-driving car technology.