Coffee machines for a childcare centre

Childcare educators take their breaks in shifts, because the ratios do not pause for coffee. A break is short, and it is planned around the room. Nobody has time to queue at a café, and nobody wants a kettle and a jar of instant to be the reward for a morning on the floor.

A staff room machine for a centre has to make a good cup quickly, in a place children never reach.

The staff room, not the floor

Hot drinks stay away from the children. Your centre's own policy decides where they are made and where they are drunk. In most centres that is a staff room or a kitchen behind a closed door.

The machine needs power, water, and a bench in that room. If the tap is elsewhere, it runs from a tank someone fills. We put the machine in where you tell us. We do not rebuild the kitchen, and we do not supply cups or milk.

Breaks on a roster

Breaks are spread across the day, room by room. That suits an automatic machine. Arico installs a Saeco Royal Plus: whole beans in a hopper, a grind for each cup, a button. An educator presses it, drinks it, and is back before the next child wakes up.

There is no barista training and no shared tamper to clean. A school staff room is a similar brief, with recess instead of a roster.

Who keeps it filled

The daily jobs are small. Empty the grounds, fill the hopper, top up the tank. Put them on the roster next to the other staff room jobs, so they belong to a shift and not to whoever notices first.

Anything beyond that is ours. Servicing and tech support are $0 while you order beans each month. Who services the machine explains what that covers.

Sizing the order

Count the educators, cooks, and office staff on a normal day. A working example, not an Arico specification: 14 people, 2 cups a day, about 7 grams a cup, 22 days open in the month. That is about 4.3 kilograms, so plan around 5.

What an office of twenty drinks has the same sum for a different headcount. The first month corrects it.

What it costs the centre

The coffee is from as little as 40 cents a cup, delivered monthly. The machine, servicing, and tech support are $0 while that order continues. Stop ordering and the arrangement stops. A free machine for a business covers the terms, which read the same for a centre as for an office.

We install in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. The postcode on the call confirms the centre.

Ask the rooms first

Ask the room leaders where they would drink it. A machine in the director's office gets used by the director, and the educators keep buying their own.