Office Coffee Machines Control: How To Curb Abuse of the Coffee Machine At The Workplace
Having heard stories of endless kilograms of coffee, sugar and litres of milk mysteriously vanishing from the office store room have become more commonplace than lunches being stolen out of the fridge. Employers unfortunately have no other choice – the provision of coffee and tea in the workplace is not only necessary, it is vital. Your hands are tied – you have to provide your staff with these refreshments, but it’s costing you more than some of their wages!
So, how exactly do you curb the misuse and theft of you office coffee products? We explain a few ingenious ways to stop this right in it’s tracks.
Coin Operated Coffee Machines
While it might seem a silly idea to “charge” your staff for their coffee, there are ways around this. You could either allocate a certain amount per person and provide them daily with a set amount of coins, to allow them to pay for their own coffee. This is a good way to limit their usage, because when their daily stipend for coffee is depleted – they will either have to cough up out of their own pocket, or they will simply not have any more coffee.
Ration Packs
This is by far my least favourite way of controlling staff usage of coffee and coffee products. It feels way too militarised – and makes employees feel as if they are being treated ;like children.
Nobody likes ration packs, and bear this in mind: pre-packages ration packs can sometimes cost you more in the long run! Why? Well, they are pre-packages kits containing the generally popular products. It’s usually some sugar, coffee and tea.
What about your milk? That’s actually usually the biggest cost – and buying milk in bulk and allowing it to stand, waiting for use, is tantamount to giving up this entire exercise. Theft of the fresh milk wills till occur, it’s still going to cost an arm and a leg – and who’s to say ALL your staff who receive these pre-packaged beverage packs ALL enjoy a certain type of coffee or tea? In my honest opinion – this method is far too outdated.
Dedicated Tea Lady
As far as I understand – the focus of this exercise is that of a cost-saving nature. Yes, having a dedicated tea lady wheel around your coffee for each tea break can be quite a pampering and luxurious feeling, but there are two big pitfalls of using this method to control coffee misuse:
Firstly, and sadly, the unfortunate reality is that not every person can be trusted. You may be employing someone to fulfil the function of curbing theft of coffee product at the workplace, but nothing is stopping her from allowing and sometimes even performing the acts of theft form your workplace.
Secondly, it is counter-productive to fork out an entire new salary to a variable resource as an attempt to save money. Yes, a nice feature, but as far as cost-cutting goes, not a reliable one at all.
Coffee Vending Machines
A total winner in my opinion. Coffee vending machines help you to save money in a way you never imaged as possible.
The coffee vending machine internally houses all the products you would need to make coffee AND tea! Your powdered milk, sugar and coffee is kept inside the lockable machine – but that’s not the best part. The product being dispensed per cup is pre-set and controlled.
So, that guy who takes 18 sugars in his coffee is no either going to ave to kick the habit – or bring his own sugar along. Same goes for the lady on the 10th floor who takes 4 heaped teaspoons of coffee per cup.
While the tea leaves can be customised and housed internally, remember that your coffee vending machine is capable of dispensing pure hot water. This means you can provide tea bags for those who prefer tea over coffee, because the cost of a tea bag is almost insignificant VS the cost of milk and sugar etc.
Moreover, coffee vending machines are able to service a large amount of people in a short space of time, so instead of a ten-man queue forming behind the urn, you can have your employees caffeinated and back to work in half the time.
The coffee vending machine is a modern, cost and time saving machine that will give you everything you’re looking for in your cost-cutting exercise – and almost surely reduce those tension headaches you get when you receive your milk and coffee bill at month end.
If you have any questions or concerns about coffee machines and coffee products, we are always here to help.
Leave a comment below and we’ll be onto it ASAP!
