Office coffee planning tool

Office Coffee Machine Size Calculator

Size the machine to the team, not the other way around. Enter headcount and drinking habits to see daily cup volume, the morning queue, a suggested machine class, tank capacity and beans per week.

  • Headcount to cups
  • Peak-hour check
  • Nothing uploaded

The team's coffee day

Use an average weekday. The starting values describe a 20-person office, not a quote or a model recommendation.

Team demand
Morning peak

Most offices drink more coffee between arrival and the first meeting than the daily average suggests. Count only the busy window, not the whole morning.

Drinks and milk

Milk drinks matter twice: they add milk to the shopping list and a daily cleaning step to whoever owns the machine.

Brew assumptions

A 240 ml cup at 12 g is a filter-style starting point. Espresso and milk drinks usually use more coffee and less water per serving.

Your numbers stay in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, saved or added to a URL.

Your sizing readout

What the team needs

Enter the team and its drinking habits, then pressSize the machine. The readout shows daily cups, the morning peak rate, a planning-grade machine class, tank size and the beans to buy each week.

How the office machine size estimate works

The estimate starts from demand, not from a machine catalogue. It converts headcount into cups per day, then checks whether those cups arrive at a pace one brew path can serve.

  • Daily cups = people who drink coffee × cups per person per day.
  • Morning peak rate = daily cups × peak share ÷ peak window in hours.
  • Service interval = peak window in seconds ÷ cups served in the peak.
  • Daily water = daily cups × drink size ÷ 1,000.
  • Beans per week = daily cups × coffee dose × 7 ÷ 1,000.
  • Tank target = daily water ÷ planned refills, rounded up to a standard tank size.

Worked example: 20 people at two cups a day

Using the calculator's starting values

Daily cups
20 people × 2 cups = 40 cups a day
Morning peak
60% of 40 cups = 24 cups in 60 minutes = 24 cups an hour
Service interval
3,600 seconds ÷ 24 cups = one drink every 150 seconds
Water
40 × 240 ml = 9.6 L a day
Milk
16 milk drinks × 150 ml = 2.4 L a day
Beans
40 × 12 g = 0.48 kg a day, or 3.36 kg a week
Machine class
Single-group bean-to-cup super-automatic with a 5 L tank and about two refills a day.

Change only the peak share to 100% inside a 30-minute window and the same 40-cup day reaches 80 cups an hour. The daily volume still fits a single group, but the queue no longer does, so the recommendation moves up to a plumbed commercial class.

What this estimate leaves out

The result is a planning estimate for comparing machine classes, not a guarantee of throughput and not a recommendation of a specific model.

  • Brew cycle and recovery. Two machines in the same class can differ in how quickly the boiler recovers between drinks. Check the manufacturer's brew cycle and recovery time before committing.
  • Water used for cleaning. Rinsing, descaling and milk-line flushing add water that the daily drink total does not include.
  • Milk and cleaning labour. Milk volume is estimated, but the cleaning routine is a people cost. A milk-heavy office should decide who owns it before the machine arrives.
  • Peak behaviour. The model assumes cups are spread evenly inside the peak window. Real queues clump around meetings and arrivals, so leave headroom if the office has fixed start times.
  • Grounds and waste. A high-volume machine fills its grounds bin quickly. Emptying it is part of the daily routine, not an occasional task.
  • Cup size and dose are assumptions. A 240 ml cup at 12 g is a filter-style baseline. Espresso and milk drinks usually use more coffee and less water per serving, so adjust both fields if that is the office's habit.

Frequently asked questions

How many cups a day does a 20-person office need?

At two cups per person, that is 40 cups a day. The more important number is the morning peak: if 60% of those cups arrive in one hour, the machine has to serve 24 drinks an hour, not 40 across the whole day. The calculator shows both numbers so the machine is sized for the busiest hour, not the average.

What machine class fits a small office?

Up to about 8 cups a day, a pod machine or small drip brewer is usually simpler than a super-automatic. Between roughly 9 and 40 cups a day, a single-group bean-to-cup machine fits, provided someone refills the tank and empties the grounds bin. Above that, the tank, brew path and cleaning routine all move up a class.

Why does the morning peak change the recommendation?

A machine can handle a daily total and still fail the morning queue. The peak rate and the service interval show how often a drink has to be ready during the busiest window. When that interval gets short, the answer is usually a second brew path or pre-brewed batch coffee, not a larger single machine.

How is the tank size calculated?

The calculator divides daily water by the number of refills the machine class can reasonably expect in a day, then rounds up to a standard tank size. Once the daily volume is too large for a manual tank, it recommends a plumbed water line instead of a bigger jug.

How many beans should an office buy each week?

Multiply daily cups by the coffee dose per cup, then by seven. At 40 cups and 12 g per cup, that is 0.48 kg a day and 3.36 kg a week. Buy in a size you can finish within a few weeks of roasting so the beans do not go stale in the cupboard.

Is anything I enter saved or sent anywhere?

No. The calculation runs in your browser, and the values stay in the page. Nothing is uploaded, stored in the URL, or sent to an analytics endpoint.

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