This is hard to understate the importance of this. If a company feels obligated to cut spending by cutting small expenses on consumables, such as coffee or even free fruit programs, then they are at a level of going through the proverbial couch cushions hoping to find a coin to meet the budget.
Is that even such a bad thing? Given the choice between cutting expenses on food/drinks and firing people, I cant really blame a manager for choosing to keep the people and lose the coffee.
The whole point is that if you're already faced with the choice if cutting coffee or firing people, you will already fire people regardless of how much you cut in coffee. It's futile and specious reasoning, which at most only work as signaling.