What Should A Company of 100 People Spend On Coffee?

In a perfect world, we would all spend as little as possible on everything we could. R 1 000.00 car payments? Yes please! A bond instalment of less than R 2 000.00? Even better!

A coffee for R 3.00 a cup? You got it. No, really, this could be a reality for you. Have I got your attention now?

How Much Can An Office Coffee Machine Save Me?

The starting point for any type of cost-cutting product search is to first and foremost determine how much you are currently spending. You cannot say that a solution will solve your current problems without knowing (in entirety) how far-reaching that problem is.

However, instead of doing long, tedious calculations around this – there are two easy methods to determine your monthly office coffee spend:

1) Check your slips! Keep aside your monthly grocery slips for the office and add up the following spends:

• Coffee
• Milk
• Sugar (and sweetener)
• Tea

2) Compare your average monthly spend against the average median of offices of 100 people. What is the average spend, you ask? Well, between R 4000.00 – R 6000.00 per month for a company of 100 people. That amount is based off of 18 litres of fresh milk per day, 3 large tins of Ricoffy and a 12kg bag of sugar – with sundries excluded.

So the costs I mentioned above are informally called “conscious costs” – the costs you anticipate and budget for. But there are also sneaky “unconscious” costs – have you considered how much you are unknowingly spending on:

• Replacement equipment such as kettles or urns
• Coffee accessories such as spoons, cups etc.
• Theft
• Wastage
• Overuse of products – i.e. – fresh milk for cereals
• If you are paying a dedicated tea lady to make the drinks for the staff, factor in her salary as an allocated cost as well.

How Can An Office Coffee Solution Save Me Money?

Let’s just start off by saying that if the realisation just hit you like a ton of bricks that maybe you’re wasting money on your current coffee solution, I urge you to take your hand off the mouse and get off takealot right now.

“Buying the wrong coffee machine solution can have even worse effects, and cost you more than you’re spending now”.

In an office that size, where saving money is really your driving and deciding factor, you need to do some research. We’ve been in the business long enough to know that based off these two factors, there is only really one other solution that is likely to solve your problem: A coffee vending machine.

Some coffee machine suppliers offer packaged solutions – where you can subsidize and lower your machine rental by purchasing the coffee (and coffee products) through them.

One of the biggest benefits of a coffee vending machine is eliminating the threat of theft. Vending machines house internal canisters of instant coffee, powdered milk and sugar. Some of the options allow for a canister of hot chocolate to be added, but if cost saving is your driving force, this would be counter-intuitive.
Having your coffee ingredients safely locked away behind the door of the machine means that there is no chance of anybody nicking a box of fresh milk, or even being greedy and adding that extra scoop of coffee or sugar. You have also cut your fresh milk spend entirely by replacing fresh milk with powdered milk – which goes pretty much twice as far.

Go through this check list to determine if an office coffee machine might be the right solution for you:

• Do you spend in excess of R 6 000.00 per 100 staff members, per month?
• Is theft an existing or possible problem?
• Are your staff wasting time making coffee during breaks?
• Do you want a “plug, play and walk-away” solution that requires your attention at most once a day?

If you have answered yes to these questions – a coffee vending solution might help you achieve your target. BUT – there is never a guarantee – you might have a sudden influx of “heavy coffee drinkers’ you never noticed before – maybe because of the novelty of the machine or because it’s so much easier to use.

That being said – we have seen a trend in the majority of larger companies saving an average of 20% of their overall monthly spend when adopting this type of solution. The only sure-fire way to see if this is the right option for you and your office is to physically have the machine in place, and try it out.