The Financial Times have run an interesting piece about ‘fancy coffee being a perk’ for modern offices. You can read it over here, but one part that caught my eye was:
A few months ago, Matlind Ruka was serving cappuccinos and flat whites in the café at Kenwood House, the 17th century former residence to the Earls of Mansfield. Today, he is an in-house barista making coffee for fellow employees at Zava, an online medical platform.
This is a far cry from the days where “free tea and biscuits” was listed as a perk on company websites. Even having some reasonably nice ground coffee was considered to be a luxury, and certainly an office bean to cup machine was unheard of! But an in-house barista serving fresh coffee all day long? That’s surely the dream!
Granted, it seems to be larger companies like Google that are adopting this kind of policy – they can afford it, where smaller companies may not be able to. Interestingly, a good bean to cup machine would probably be more cost-effective for a smaller office (say, 10 to 15 people) compared to a few machines for a mid sized office of 150+ staff. When you consider how often the machines would be used and how likely they are to be taken care of, the machine in the smaller office is more likely to last.
It could just be that good things come in small packages. Indie coffee shops tend to be nicer and generally better-received than chain coffee shops, so perhaps the same effect can be seen within companies? Still, it’s unlikely your small office will get its own barista, so maybe you’ll have to stick to brewing your own for the time being!