What to Look For in Office and Business Coffee Services

Whether you currently make stocking your breakroom’s beverage offerings an internal responsibility or let everyone fend for themselves, moving to an office or business coffee service can be an effective and low-cost way to boost morale and productivity. Choose the wrong service, though, and your efforts can backfire, so here’s a quick overview of what to look for.

The beverage offerings provided by your selected coffee service are obviously of paramount importance (along with the snacks they’ll keep you stocked with, if you elect to make that a part of your deal). Find a service that offers all of the coffee and tea selections your team wants, as well as creamers and sweeteners so everyone can get their drink just the way they like it. You want to ensure your office coffee service provides everything your employees want to make managing and stocking easy, and you’ll want to make sure it’s of a quality they’ll appreciate. Remember, cheap doesn’t mean good value if you’re paying for something no one likes, so make sure you get something your employees will truly appreciate.

Next, equipment is an important part of your office coffee service deal. Will you be buying or renting the equipment? Do you want single-cup brewers or more traditional multi-cup coffee machines? What about maintenance—will you have to pay each time a machine needs a repair or a tune-up, or is that included in the price? How reliable is the servicing for more complex equipment? Again, there are different costs associated with different options, but a cheap service that is frequently interrupted and problem-ridden won’t be worthwhile.

Similarly, look at the customer service record your coffee provider has. Make sure the businesses they currently cater to seem happy with the choice—if they have a lot of complaints and frustrations, odds are good that you and your team will, too.

What You Can Expect to Pay for Your Office Coffee Service

If you have your own traditional coffee machine, keeping your office supplied with all of the basics can cost as little as $5 per employee per week, possibly even less. For a more extensive product selections and rental/maintenance costs for more sophisticated machines, the price can climb a little higher. Larger offices can expect the per-employee cost to drop even with higher levels of service offered—buying in volume reduces the unit cost of keeping your office caffeinated and rarin’ to go.