How to scale good coffee in the office
Quartz is moving to a new office in New York. We’re documenting it here because many of our questions apply to other startups. Our introduction explains more about what we’re up to. Follow our publication for updates.
Coffee is really important at Quartz. As we plan our move to a new office, we have a chance to change the coffee scene and make it better.
We currently have two large coffee containers that are refilled whenever they run out, but the coffee in them isn’t very good. There are also a handful of people at Quartz who make coffee with a Chemex about twice a day because we can’t bring ourselves to drink the office coffee, and also it’s fun.
We want to keep up the habit of making coffee with the Chemex after we move. It’s a nice tradition, and people contribute beans from all of their travels. But we also want good coffee to be accessible to everyone in our new office, not just the staff who live in the #coffee channel on Slack.
The big question is: How can we produce good coffee at greater scale?
To answer this question, we looked into what mass scale coffee makers seemed to be able to make coffee we would actually want to drink. A lot of the coffee shops we frequent are selling pre-made, batch-brewed coffee (as opposed to made-to-order pour overs). After some research, we decided a Fetco coffee maker could be a good option for us.
The Fetco lets you customize the brew. It allows for temperature control between 170 and 206 degrees Fahrenheit. It uses a dome spray method of brewing while many other models drop hot water through a small hole. Our current machine has no temperature control, and the tea water it produces is colder than it should be for brewing. Also, the customizable screen could be a fun way for the hackers in the company to experiment.
Now the question becomes: Should we buy one of these or use a rental service? Looking around, we found Joyride Coffee, a distributor that leases a Fetco brewer and will service the machine for you. We’re still exploring options, but Joyride seems like it could be a good one.
Also, if we do go with Joyride, they offer recurring automatic bean delivery, or we can choose what we want each week. I imagine we will want to choose, since we love trying new coffees.
Our recommended purchase amount for an office of 120 is 50 pounds of coffee per month. At Quartz, we bought 56 pounds of Peets pre-ground beans at the end of October and are still working our way through it. We are accounting for an uptick in coffee consumption if the quality increases.
Another decision we need to make is whether we should get an espresso machine. Having an espresso machine in the office would clearly be a wonderful perk. But, nice machines are very expensive. To answer this, we’d love some feedback. Do you have an office espresso machine? Do people use it? How does the setup work?
Let us know your thoughts on the espresso question or any of the other issues above. You can just start a response below. Thanks!
