Holiday Gifts for Employees and Coworkers That Get Eaten
Office holiday gifts come in two kinds that are easy to confuse. There is the gift a manager or a company gives the people who work there, which carries a budget and sometimes a payroll question. And there is the gift coworkers give each other, which is small, may be drawn from a hat, and is judged mostly on whether it gets eaten before the party ends. Food handles both. It gets used up instead of living in a drawer, and it suits people whose tastes the giver does not know well.
The IRS line between food and gift cards
For an employer, a gift to staff is a fringe benefit, and the IRS treats some small ones as too minor to tax. Publication 15-B, the IRS employer's guide to fringe benefits for 2026, lists "holiday or birthday gifts, other than cash, with a low fair market value" among its examples of de minimis benefits. The same publication is just as clear in the other direction: cash and cash equivalents, including gift certificates and gift cards, "no matter how little, are never excludable" as a de minimis benefit. A box of chocolate on each desk and a $25 gift card in each envelope are not treated the same way. How that applies to a particular payroll is a question for the company's accountant, but it is one reason the food gift is the simpler choice.
Option one: a shared team box
For a team of ten to fifteen, one generous box on a shared table does the work of a dozen small gifts and gets eaten across a week of short December days. Build it from things that need no knife and can be taken one piece at a time.
- Twenty Venchi pistachio gianduiotti, sold one at a time: the classic gianduiotto shape filled with white chocolate and 25 percent pistachio paste, with a touch of salt (shop Venchi pistachio gianduiotti).
- Four pillow boxes of McCrea's classic vanilla caramels, about five pieces each, from a small-batch caramel maker in Boston (shop McCrea's vanilla caramels).
- King Floyd's dill pickle Virginia peanuts, 10 ounces, a flavor the maker dates to 1929, for the people who skip sweets (shop King Floyd's dill pickle peanuts).
- Two boxes of Rustic Bakery vanilla shortbread, a buttery cookie made with Madagascar vanilla bean (shop Rustic Bakery vanilla shortbread).
At listed prices the box comes to about $70 before the container, or about $5 to $7 a person for a team of ten to fifteen. For the container, a navy gift box with a magnetic flap measures 14 by 9 by 4.3 inches (shop the navy gift box). Set it out open, with a card that says who it is from and what is in it.
Option two: a gift for each person
When the gift should be personal, the same item for everyone is fine; the handwritten line on the card is what makes it personal. Three tiers, by budget:
| Budget per person | Gift | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| About $18 | A Dick Taylor brown butter bar and a card | Flat and easy to hand out |
| About $28 | The bar plus Lakrids by Bülow B, passion fruit | Dark chocolate and sweet-tart licorice, two makers |
| About $39 | A canister of Mariage Frères Marco Polo and a card | Loose-leaf tea, brewed one cup at a time |
The Dick Taylor brown butter bar is 73 percent Northerner Blend dark chocolate infused with browned Humboldt Creamery butter and finished by hand with roasted cacao nibs and sea salt (shop the Dick Taylor brown butter bar). Lakrids by Bülow's B is sweet licorice coated in white chocolate and passion fruit, inside a crunchy sugar shell (shop Lakrids by Bülow B passion fruit). The Lakrids by Bülow producer guide covers the company Johan Bülow started on Bornholm in 2007.
Marco Polo is Mariage Frères' scented black tea, fruity and floral, loose-leaf in a 100-gram canister (shop Mariage Frères Marco Polo). For a card with some humor in it, Ladyfingers Letterpress makes an "I've got your back" friendship card (shop the I've Got Your Back card).
Between coworkers: Secret Santa under $25
When an exchange sets a cap of $20 or $25, two small things from different makers feel like more than one bigger thing at the same price. Three pairings, at listed prices:
- For the person with a sweet tooth, about $22: Lakrids by Bülow B, passion fruit, and Pastiglie Leone orange pastilles, from the Candy Originals line the company calls its oldest (shop Leone orange pastilles).
- For the person who cooks lunch from home, under $22: Burlap & Barrel's Spice Passports, a pocket-sized travel pack of eight of the spice company's bestsellers in sample pods (shop Burlap & Barrel Spice Passports), and a tin of José Gourmet sardines in extra virgin olive oil (shop José Gourmet sardines).
- For the person who makes the drinks at the party, under $24: Fee Brothers Old Fashion aromatic bitters, from a Rochester, New York, family business dating to 1864 (shop Fee Brothers Old Fashion bitters), and King Floyd's dill pickle Virginia peanuts.
Allergens, and the card
A team gift goes to people whose allergies the giver may not know. Put the contents on the card: "pistachio chocolates, caramels, peanuts, shortbread" takes one line and lets people choose. The pistachio gianduiotti are filled with white chocolate and pistachio paste; anyone with an allergy should check the maker's label. If someone on the team has a serious allergy, a separate small gift for that person is kinder than a shared box they cannot touch.
On the card itself, one specific sentence beats a general one. "Thank you for covering the Friday desk all autumn" will be remembered after the caramels are gone.
Short answers
How much should an employer spend on holiday gifts for employees? The figures here run from about $5 to $7 a person for a shared box to about $18 to $39 for an individual gift. The IRS guide's word for excludable holiday gifts is "low fair market value."
Are gift cards a good employee gift? They are easy, but IRS Publication 15-B says gift cards are never excludable as a de minimis benefit, however small. A low-value food gift can be; a gift card cannot.
What is a good Secret Santa gift under $25? Two small things from different makers: passion fruit licorice and orange pastilles for someone with a sweet tooth, or a pack of spices and a tin of sardines for someone who cooks.
For gifts to clients rather than staff, the corporate and client gifting guide covers tiers and shipping a list. Products ship across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com.
