How to Reduce Costs at the Workplace: Cutting Your Office Coffee Spend

Supplying your staff with coffee and other hot beverages is considered a norm in the workplace – whether it is your domestic helper you’re providing these items to, your small office of 5 staff members – all the way up to large corporates catering to excesses of 200 people daily.

There is no getting away from the fact that this spend can be financially heavy month-to-month, and while many offices opt to cut this benefit entirely – there are far easier ways to keep benefit alive and kicking – and reducing your monthly cost.

Here are some unique tips to reducing your monthly spend on refreshments:

How to Save Money On Coffee at the Office

If you are currently buying your coffee, tea, sugar and milk on a weekly or monthly basis, it may be beneficial to buy from a coffee wholesaler. By buying in bulk, you can dramatically reduce costs. Smaller retailers usually add a considerable mark-up on their products, a price difference you can enjoy if you buy directly from a wholesaler in bulk.

Your staff might fancy themselves as coffee connoisseurs, but it can be very expensive to buy premium coffee all the time. Try mixing this with a less expensive type. It will give your coffee a gourmet taste while making the more expensive coffee last for longer (and your employees are unlikely to notice the difference!)

This method reduces costs in the short term, but you still run the risk of theft, misuse and overuse by the staff.

If you make use of a filter coffee machine at your office and you buy fresh coffee beans, try pre-grinding them until they are very fine and resemble an espresso grind – they will go much further. You will only need to use half your normal amount of scoops to get the same or an even darker pot, although you may need to use a double filter so that no grounds get through.

If you’ve tried and tested these methods before with no avail, it might be a good time to consider a coffee vending machine solution. See, opting for a bean to cup solution – or worse yet – capsule – you will likely increase and maybe even double your spend – considering the price of the machine as well as all the ingredients required.

Coffee vending machines are available in two options; one that makes use of instant coffee, and another that makes use of whole coffee beans. Choosing between the two is as simple as determining if your regular coffee drinkers are happy with the taste of instant coffee, or prefer the more robust taste of freshly ground beans. Both types of machines will make use of powdered milk – but the biggest benefits of using a vending machine for cost control at the office includes:

• Portion control – the vending machine is pre-set to dispense a certain amount of product per cup, which cannot be changed on the machine unless otherwise permanently programmed to do so. This reduces the chances of overuse – especially with sugar.
• Access control – the machine is lockable. This means there can be no theft of the product contained inside.
• Set monthly cost – when signing up to rent your coffee vending machine, an analysis on your daily usage should be carried out. You will then choose your product amount based on your usage – so there will be no unexpected costs at the end of the month.
• While a coffee machine is limited to dispensing only the products contained inside, you can still opt to offer staff tea bags for those who prefer that as their tea-time drink of choice; you can still dispense hot water only from a coffee vending machine, so you can keep everyone happy.