Well, no: if I often don't have 5 minutes to spare at the office to buy a sandwich, it can't be a surprise not to have 5 minutes to spare on a shortened work day.

But the whole point is this: food on short-haul flights is useful, even to leisure passengers, precisely because it makes good use of the dead time in flight to do things (like eat and drink) that might otherwise be difficult. If you can rely on it being there, it makes the rest of your day easier.

And an airline that makes the rest of my day easier is being a friend to me.