Workplace Catering Consumption Calculator
Monthly tea, coffee, water, cups and stirrers from headcount and format — with the cost per serving that makes offers comparable.
Workplace catering consumption and budget calculator
From headcount to monthly tea, coffee, water and disposables — and the cost per serving that makes offers comparable.
Result
Prices are labelled TRY because that is the currency we quote in. The arithmetic is linear, so if you enter your own unit prices in another currency the totals come back in that same currency — read the suffix as your currency, not ours.
The calculation runs entirely in your browser; nothing you type is sent to our servers. Only if you press “Turn this into a quote request” is the result written to your browser’s session storage, so it can be carried into the quote form.
Worked example
Opened with its default case — Number of employees: 50 · Working days per month: 22 · Tea per person per day (cups): 3 — the calculator returns the figures below. They are written out here so the output is readable without running JavaScript: in print, with scripts disabled, or by a search engine.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Number of employees | 50 |
| Working days per month | 22 |
| Tea per person per day (cups) | 3 |
| Tea format | Teapot bags — about 1.07 g per cup (a 3.2 g bag makes 3 cups) |
| Coffee per person per day (cups) | 1.5 |
| Coffee format | Instant (granules) — about 2 g per cup |
| Water per person per day (litres) | 1.75 |
| Allowance for meeting traffic (%) | 15 |
| Tea unit price (TRY/kg) | 420 |
| Coffee unit price (TRY/kg) | 900 |
| Water carboy (TRY each, 19 L) | 75 |
| Disposable cups (TRY per pack of 100) | 60 |
| Stirrers (TRY per pack of 1000) | 90 |
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Tea / month | 4 kg |
| Coffee / month | 3.8 kg |
| Water / month | 117 carboys (19 L) |
| Cups / month | 57 packs (100 each) |
| Stirrers / month | 3 packs (1000 each) |
| Monthly total cost | 17,581 TRY |
| Per person per month | 352 TRY |
| Cost per serving | 3.09 TRY |
| Annual budget | 210,968 TRY |
Change any field above and the calculator recomputes; this table is the default case only. Money figures follow the default unit prices built into the tool at August 2026 price levels, VAT excluded — enter your own prices for a real budget.
How much tea and coffee does an office get through?
Work it out per person-day, not per person per month, and then add a meeting allowance. Our planning assumptions: 2–4 cups of tea and 1–2 cups of coffee per person per day, plus 1.5–2 litres of water. The format decides the weight: a 3.2 g teapot bag makes three cups — small Turkish tea glasses — according to its pack instructions (about 1.07 g per cup), and we assume 2.5 g per cup for loose leaf, 2 g for instant coffee and 7 g for filter. Fifty people over 22 working days at three cups of tea a day is about 3,300 cups, or roughly 3,800 — some 4 kg of teapot bags or 9.5 kg of loose leaf — once a 15% meeting allowance is added. The figure to compare offers on is not the price per kilo but the cost per serving, because the grams per cup differ by up to three and a half times between formats.
Consumption per person-day
| Item | Planning band (our assumption) | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Tea | 2–4 cups | Local habit; a workplace with a shared kitchen can run higher than one with a machine on each floor |
| Coffee | 1–2 cups | Whether a bean-to-cup machine is available; availability can drive consumption as much as preference |
| Water | 1.5–2 litres | Season and whether the building is air-conditioned; summer moves it to the top of the band |
| Disposable cups | Tea cups + coffee cups | Ceramic mugs in a kitchen remove most of this line |
| Stirrers | About half the servings | Only the drinks that get sugar or milk |
These are planning starting points, not measured statistics. The most reliable way to replace them is a single month’s actual purchasing divided by person-days.
Format changes the weight, not just the price
This is where the price per kilogram can mislead. Filter coffee at 7 g per cup and instant at 2 g per cup are three and a half times apart on consumption, so filter coffee at the same price per kilo costs three and a half times as much per cup. Tea runs the other way: a 3.2 g teapot bag makes three cups (about 1.07 g per cup) against our 2.5 g planning assumption for loose leaf, so on that assumption loose leaf needs a much lower price per kilo to win per cup — measure your own brewing ratio and replace the figure — and it shifts cost from the invoice into preparation time, which is real even though it never appears in the budget.
Compare offers on cost per serving: price per kilo × grams per serving ÷ 1,000, item by item. That is the figure that lets a bagged-tea offer, a loose-leaf offer, an instant coffee and a filter coffee sit in the same table honestly. The calculator’s own per-serving figure is the blended budget — tea, coffee, water and disposables divided by all servings — and it prints it to two decimals.
The meeting allowance
A per-head norm counts what people drink at their own desks. Meetings and visitors add a layer on top that is easy to underestimate, because it is concentrated: a client-facing office can run 20% above the per-head figure while a back-office team runs at zero. Ten to twenty per cent is our planning assumption; set it from your own meeting-room booking data rather than by feel if you have it.
Water: carboys, mains or bottles
Three supply models, and the cheapest per litre is not always the cheapest overall. Carboys (19 L bottles on a dispenser) have the lowest entry cost and a recurring delivery and handling burden — someone has to lift them. Mains-fed dispensers remove the deliveries and the lifting entirely, and replace them with a filter change and a plumbing connection; there is no fixed headcount at which they win, so compare the two on annual cost. Small bottles are the most expensive per litre by a wide margin and are worth keeping only for meeting rooms and visitors.
The calculator models carboys; if you are comparing against a mains-fed unit, take the annual carboy cost it returns and set it against the unit price plus the annual filter and sanitisation cost.
Disposables and the quiet cost
Cups and stirrers look trivial per unit and are not trivial per year: 3,300 tea servings plus 1,650 coffee servings a month — about 5,700 once the 15% meeting allowance is added — is roughly 68,000 disposable cups a year for fifty people. Two things change that number materially. Ceramic mugs in a kitchen with a dishwasher remove most of the line entirely. And where disposables are needed, cup size matters more than cup price — a larger cup is not filled less, so oversizing the cup quietly increases tea and coffee consumption too.
What to send us for a quote
Send the calculator output with the machine types you have (teapot, bean-to-cup, filter, instant), the water dispenser model and whether there is a dishwasher. Machines decide the format, and format decides the grams. We quote tea, coffee, water, sugar, milk, cups, stirrers and napkins as one line-by-line list on one invoice, with a scheduled delivery day so nobody buys coffee at retail prices because a cupboard ran empty.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much tea does an office of 50 people use per month?
At three cups per person-day over 22 working days with a 15% meeting allowance, roughly 3,800 cups — about 4 kg of teapot bags (a 3.2 g bag makes three cups), or 9.5 kg of loose leaf at our 2.5 g-per-cup assumption. The cup count is the stable figure; the kilos follow from the format.
Why compare on cost per serving rather than price per kilo?
Because grams per cup differ by up to three and a half times between formats. Filter coffee at 7 g and instant at 2 g cost very differently per cup even at the same price per kilogram. Cost per serving is the only comparable figure.
Is a mains-fed water dispenser cheaper than carboys?
It can be, once the delivery, handling and storage of 19 L bottles are counted rather than just the price per bottle; there is no fixed headcount threshold. Compare the annual carboy cost from this calculator against the unit price plus annual filter and sanitisation cost.
How much should the meeting allowance be?
Our planning assumption is 10–20% above the per-head norm, higher where clients are hosted regularly. It is concentrated rather than spread, so set it from meeting-room usage rather than averaging it across everyone.
Do disposable cups really matter in the budget?
For fifty people they run to tens of thousands a year. Ceramic mugs with a dishwasher remove most of the line; where disposables are needed, cup size matters more than cup price, because a larger cup is still filled.
Can you deliver on a fixed day each month?
Yes — a standing order sized from this calculation with a scheduled delivery day is the point of doing the calculation. It replaces a stream of small retail purchases with one invoice and one delivery.
Related guides
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