Is having lunch and or coffee fund money deducted from your paycheck illegal in NY

Probably not, but tell us more - did your employer provide you with lunch and coffee and make it clear that you will be billed for these items?

Actually in NY it would be. NYS law prohibits an employer from deducting ANYTHING without the employee's consent. Now it is possible that these deductions were a condition of employment and if you protest you might lose your job.

Agreed, you would have had to agree to have it deducted.

This deduction was an arrangement, with consent, made by the employee as we do not have a cafeteria on the premises. We order lunch as many days during the week that we want and the cost associated with those lunches get forwarded to our Payroll department and it gets deducted from our checks for payment to the vendors. We are now being told that NY state has adopted a law that states these deductions can no longer be taken out of our pay.

NY already has a law that states that deductions can't be taken without employee consent. I'm not of any new law that would prevent these type of deductions. If you want to keep the arrangement and your employer is stating they can't, then ask them to cite the law.

Or you can make a separate arrangement where someone in the office takes responsibility for collecting the payments and paying the vendor.

If they don't