The hidden cost of sending people downstairs for coffee

Workplace coffee that lives downstairs is not a coffee policy. It is a default. Someone ducks out at 10:15, then again after lunch. In a small business that can be half the floor. In a warehouse it can be a ute to the shops. The business often calls it "they buy their own".

That still costs you. You just do not invoice it.

The cash

A café cup is several dollars. Two cups a day, most working days of the year, paid by the person, is a large personal habit sitting next to your cheap official tin. We will not total it for a building we have not seen. Run the cups yourself against what people actually spend.

If even half a twenty-person site does this every day, it is not a rounding error. It is the real coffee budget, hiding in wages and goodwill.

The time

The walk takes people off the floor. How long depends on the lift, the street, and the queue. Count it from your door if it matters. Do not take a minute-count from this page.

Some managers like the walk. Then it is a break. Call it a break. If the goal is a decent cup without leaving the site, the run is the long way round.

The unofficial second system

Rain does not cancel the habit. It just makes it slower. A cup plus a sandwich on a card is not a coffee line on your P&L, which is why the coffee line looks tidy.

The second trip is often the expensive one. An on-site machine has to be good enough that 3pm still has somewhere to go that is not the street.

What it does to the kitchen

The site still keeps a jar of instant "for when people can't go out". Then a pod machine "for meetings". Then the café remains the real drink. You are funding three systems so that one of them can be avoided.

Bean-to-cup on site is meant to collapse that. One hopper, one button, a cup so going out is a choice. That is the workplace coffee machine people were searching for while they kept walking.

What Arico puts on the bench

A Saeco Royal Plus, beans each month, from as little as 40 cents a cup. The free machine arrangement keeps the hardware off a rental line.

You will not ban the café. You do not need to. You need a cup on site that is good enough that going out is occasional, not the 10am reflex, and that people are not covering the drinks bill themselves.