Markets

Warren Buffett has come for the free cheese at Kraft

Read in app
colby cheese
Wikimedia Commons

Warren Buffett has come for the free cheese at Kraft.

A report from Bloomberg's Noah Buhayar on Thursday said that Kraft has cut down on perks like free employee snacks following its merger with Warren Buffett-owned Heinz.

Bloomberg, citing an internal Kraft memo, said that travel, electricity, and office-supply expenses have been shaved following the merger.

Additionally, fridges stocked with Kraft snacks at the company's Chicago headquarters have been eliminated.

Kraft was acquired by Heinz, which Buffett owns alongside Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital, back in March as part of a deal that created the fifth-largest food and beverage company in North America.

At the time, we highlighted one word in the merger announcement that should make every Kraft employee nervous: "synergy."

As Business Insider's Sam Ro noted, "synergy" is usually code for things like job cuts, cost cuts, and generally stricter management as acquiring companies look to trim costs and "streamline" the organizations they now manage.

In that announcement, the companies said they expected to realize $1.5 billion in annual savings due to synergies from the merger.

Eliminating snacks is part of how you get there.

Read the full report at Bloomberg here »

Read next

Myles was formerly Business Insider's markets correspondent. He joined Business Insider as a markets reporter in May 2014, coming to BI from The Fly on The Wall where he was a writer for its breaking-news team. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut.