Cost per Cup of Office Coffee

The cost per cup formula

Use this formula for a month, a year or a complete equipment term:

Fully loaded cost per cup = (ingredients + disposables + equipment allocation + service and repairs + cleaning + electricity + water and drainage + filtration + staff time + other attributable overheads) ÷ usable drinks served

Each item belongs to the same reporting period:

• Ingredients: beans, ground coffee, capsules or soluble coffee; milk and alternatives; sugar and any other drink ingredients. Include waste.
• Disposables: cups, lids, sleeves and stirrers actually used.
• Equipment allocation: an appropriate share of the machine, grinder, milk fridge and installation, or the payments attributable to that period.
• Service and repairs: contracted maintenance, uncovered repairs, call-outs and any required inspections.
• Cleaning: tablets, milk-system cleaner, descaler where specified, brushes and washing supplies.
• Electricity: brewing, heating, standby, cleaning and associated refrigeration.
• Water and drainage: drink preparation, automatic rinses, cleaning and washing.
• Filtration: cartridges, filter-head allocation and replacement labour.
• Staff time: replenishing, cleaning, emptying, ordering and administering the service.
• Other overheads: attributable waste collection, training, replacement crockery and any explicitly allocated shared facilities.

Do not add a component again if it is already included in a service agreement or equipment package. Our buying and leasing guide puts this calculation within the wider procurement process.

Ingredient cost is not fully loaded cost

An ingredient-and-disposable figure answers: what goes into a drink and its serving container?

A marginal cost answers a slightly different question: what additional resources does one extra drink require? That can include incremental electricity and water, but usually excludes equipment commitments already made.

A fully loaded figure allocates the whole coffee operation across its output. Keep these figures separate rather than presenting an ingredient-only calculation as the complete answer.

Measure your workplace in six steps

The following is a suggested audit method, not a brewing recipe or a claim about typical office consumption.

1. Choose a representative period. Start with 10 working days covering quieter and busier attendance patterns. Record visitors, downtime and unusual events; extend the audit if those days do not represent normal use.

2. Count usable drinks. Reconcile machine counters with rejected drinks, test coffees and cleaning activity. For batch brewing, count servings actually taken, not theoretical servings available from the brewer.

3. Record recipes consistently. Note dry coffee dose in g, liquid milk in ml, drink output and any extra brewing cycles. Record the normal temperature setting in degrees Celsius, or its named setting if the machine does not display a temperature, and keep it unchanged during comparison. A tank setting is not a measured temperature at the coffee: FETCO, for example, publishes a factory tank setting of 93°C for its CBS-1221 brewer.

4. Reconcile stock and waste. For each ingredient, calculate opening stock plus deliveries minus closing stock. Record transfers elsewhere. Measure discarded milk separately, and distinguish dry coffee lost before brewing from wet spent grounds, which also contain water.

5. Measure supporting resources and time. Record electricity in kWh, water in litres and hands-on work in minutes. Include start-up, rinsing, cleaning and overnight refrigeration. Time a complete maintenance routine, distinguishing active work from automatic cycle time.

6. Apply your own quotations and invoices. Multiply each measured quantity by its applicable unit rate, allocate fixed commitments, add unrecoverable VAT and divide by usable drinks. Keep the assumptions beside the result.

For electricity measurement and operating schedules, use running and energy costs rather than estimating consumption from the machine’s rated power alone.

Work out beans, milk and serving supplies

Beans per cup

For a single recipe:

Bean use in kg = drinks prepared × dry dose in g ÷ 1,000

For a mixed menu, calculate each recipe separately and add the results. A drink using two brewing cycles needs both doses included.

For forecasting, if waste is defined as a proportion of all beans consumed:

Total bean requirement = recipe requirement ÷ (1 − waste fraction)

That definition matters. Adding a percentage to the recipe requirement gives a different answer from treating the same percentage as a share of total consumption.

For an audit, the stock reconciliation is the stronger starting point. Divide actual bean consumption by usable drinks to reveal the effective dose, including losses and rejected coffees.

Milk per drink

Measure the liquid milk drawn from the container, not the volume of foam in the cup. Frothing incorporates air, so finished foam volume is not a reliable purchasing measure.

Calculate each milk recipe separately, then add milk discarded from containers, lines, rejected drinks and cleaning routines. Keep dairy and each alternative in separate spreadsheet rows because their consumption and wastage may differ.

Cups, sugar and stirrers

Use actual take-up. Not every coffee needs sugar, a disposable cup or a stirrer.

For reusable mugs, include attributable washing, detergent and breakages. When using a measured dishwasher total, state how you allocated shared loads to coffee service. Do not count the same washing electricity or water again elsewhere.

Worked example: quantities first, quotations second

This fictional workplace illustrates the method without assuming supplier rates or presenting its quantities as industry averages.

Assumptions

• Average daily attendance: 40 people.
• Coffee consumption: 2 usable drinks per attendee per day.
• Working days in the month: 20.
• Every usable drink uses one 10 g coffee dose.
• Milk drinks: 60% of usable drinks, each drawing 120 ml of liquid milk.
• Coffee losses: 5% of all beans consumed.
• Milk losses: 10% of all milk consumed.
• Disposable cups and stirrers: each used for 25% of drinks.
• Sugar: 20% of drinks, using one 4 g portion.
• Measured monthly electricity: 60 kWh, including the dedicated milk fridge.
• Measured monthly water: 500 litres, including allocated cleaning and washing.
• Hands-on maintenance: 15 minutes per working day.
• Equipment allocation period: 60 months, an assumption rather than a lifespan claim.
• Service, filters, cleaning supplies and other overheads: entered from itemised quotations and records.
• VAT basis: include only VAT the organisation cannot recover.

The quantity calculation

Usable drinks are 40 × 2 × 20 = 1,600.

Recipe coffee is 1,600 × 10 g ÷ 1,000 = 16 kg. Including the stated losses, total bean consumption is 16 ÷ 0.95 = approximately 16.84 kg.

There are 960 milk drinks. Recipe milk is 960 × 120 ml ÷ 1,000 = 115.2 litres. Including losses, total milk consumption is 115.2 ÷ 0.90 = 128 litres.

Serving supplies are 400 disposable cups, 400 stirrers and 320 sugar portions, equivalent to 1.28 kg of sugar. Maintenance requires 300 minutes, or 5 hours.

Multiply those quantities, the 60 kWh and the 500 litres by your own applicable rates. Add the monthly equipment allocation, service, filtration, cleaning, attributable waste collection and five hours of employer staff time. Divide the total by 1,600.

For purchased equipment, one planning approach is acquisition and installation less an explicitly assumed residual value, divided across the allocation period. Do not add the full acquisition outlay again. For financed or hired equipment, use one consistent treatment, supported by your finance team; see leasing, renting and buying.

Account for actual utilisation and VAT

Attendance changes the denominator

Build attendance scenarios before accepting a supplier’s consumption estimate. At the example’s assumed two drinks per attendee, the headcount-to-cups relationship is:

• 20 people attending: 40 drinks daily.
• 40 people attending: 80 drinks daily.
• 60 people attending: 120 drinks daily.

These are planning scenarios, not machine-capacity recommendations. If usable output halves while a fixed monthly commitment remains unchanged, that fixed component per drink doubles. Ingredients change with consumption; fixed commitments do not automatically follow.

Check peak demand separately. A machine that can meet a daily total may still need assessment against a concentrated meeting break.

Apply the right VAT treatment

UK VAT treatment checked in November 2026:

• Roasted coffee beans, ground coffee and fresh milk bought as food are generally zero-rated at 0%.
• Ordinary machine purchases and hire, servicing, water filters and separately purchased paper cups are generally standard-rated at 20%.
• Non-qualifying business electricity is normally standard-rated. Small supplies can qualify for relief at no more than an average 33 kWh daily, or 1,000 kWh monthly, assessed for the supply to the customer at the premises, not for the coffee machine alone.
• The reviewer’s suggested 5% electricity assumption is not universally current. HMRC states that qualifying electricity supplies in Great Britain are temporarily zero-rated from 1 October 2026 to 30 June 2027. Qualifying supplies in Northern Ireland remain at 5%.

Use the electricity invoice’s correct treatment rather than assigning a rate solely from machine consumption. Selling prepared hot coffee also has different VAT treatment from buying zero-rated ingredients: hot drinks supplied through catering are generally standard-rated.

For the example, enter ingredient invoices on their applicable basis and include only unrecoverable VAT on other inputs. Ask your finance team to confirm recovery, especially where partial exemption applies.

Compare machine types on equal terms

Compare the same usable drink volume, serving size, milk mix, reporting period and VAT basis. The table identifies what to measure, not a universal winner.

These are operational comparisons, not reliability findings. Manufacturer documentation confirms that bean-to-cup and batch systems have different cleaning and preparation routines; measure their consequences in your workplace rather than assuming identical overheads.

Request itemised written quotations for every option. Check service inclusions against service contracts, and use UK machine costs for the wider list of equipment and contractual components.

Troubleshoot a misleading calculation