My impression is that these employee creature comforts are the absolute first thing to go. It's when the scope of business is narrowed or segments/IP is sold off that I would start worrying. I have no special insight on this, however.
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.