Biscuits sweeten the boardroom for business: survey

SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) - Biscuits can sweeten corporate meetings or make them crumble, according to a survey which revealed cookies were deemed the next most important aspect of the boardroom after tables and chairs.

Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts surveyed more than 1,000 business professionals across Britain, and 80 percent said biscuits improve the quality and outcome of a meeting.

Legal professionals are most likely to be positively influenced by a good quality biscuit, followed by sales, media or marketing professionals.

Chocolate digestives were top of the list of biscuits most-wanted in the boardroom, followed by shortbread, oat biscuits, jam rings and Bourbon chocolate creams.

"It's incredible to think that important decisions might be made based on a biscuit," Holiday Inn said in a statement.

"Key players in the business world are clearly being influenced by the quality of boardroom biscuits."

Biscuits were prioritized over lighting, technology and artwork in a boardroom, with 64 percent of respondents confessing that the quality of biscuits on offer was a matter of discussion.

Cookies also helped highlight the agenda of a meeting, with 42 percent of those surveyed said they would not serve them if they were about to fire an employee.

But, if biscuits had to accompany bad news, 18 percent said they would resort to chocolate digestives to soften the blow.

The "Business Biscuit Survey" also revealed boardroom snacking was not lacking in etiquette, with 50 percent saying they would take only two biscuits at most during a meeting.

Cookies were largely off limits if they looked too crumbly or if someone was making a presentation during the meeting. And nearly a quarter of respondents said they would wait until someone more senior had a biscuit before taking one.

(Reporting by Miral Fahmy, editing by Paul Casciato)