For a while, Porter Airlines (Canada) would offer free coffee + free cookies out of their terminal in Toronto. They would also offer you a free beer (a full 500ml, not the 341ml one) on the flight if this was an afternoon/evening flight. I feel that a lot of their expansion was just the word of mouth "OH AND THEY GIVE YOU FREE COOKIES". Their flight might have been a bit more expensive, but the amount of good will they got from those free items was huge and for a while Porter was really what people preferred.
Then they sold their terminal and started leasing it, and now suddenly, no more free coffee and free cookies. I don't know if the free beer is still around but for a while we had everyone complain on how "they no longer have free cookies". And then we just stopped hearing about it because people just didn't care about Porter anymore, you would just get the cheapest flight and that would typically not be them and it's not like they were offering something special anymore.
It looks to me that this was probably not a super huge expense that was probably giving them a much higher ROI than the pure $ value of what it cost them.
That's sad. I used to go to NYC from Toronto for work once every month or two and I always flew Porter, and it was the best. The cookies and coffee was a nice touch. Comfortable lounge, etc. But that was 8, 9 years ago, and the last time I flew Porter was to Burlington, VT (before they cut that route) to go skiing, and they were in the process of renovating the lounge and changing things around. There was still free coffee but the shortbread cookies were nowhere to be seen; I could see things were changing.
That route was the best, BTW; I'd leave my house at 6:30am or so by taxi, get an early morning flight to Newark, take the train to Penn station, walk from there to the office and still arrive before many of my NY coworkers were at the office. Once we got bought by Google I found I could still make it to the Google NYC office in time for breakfast service. Memories :-)
> Their flight might have been a bit more expensive,
So they weren't free. They were just priced into your ticket.
note: I'm not saying they didn't generate good will. Just say if the flight was more expensive then a competitor then you were actually paying for those things and it was just fiction that they were free.
Then they sold their terminal and started leasing it, and now suddenly, no more free coffee and free cookies. I don't know if the free beer is still around but for a while we had everyone complain on how "they no longer have free cookies". And then we just stopped hearing about it because people just didn't care about Porter anymore, you would just get the cheapest flight and that would typically not be them and it's not like they were offering something special anymore.
It looks to me that this was probably not a super huge expense that was probably giving them a much higher ROI than the pure $ value of what it cost them.