The post Covid-19 office environment has changes for many professional companies. For one, the numbers of staff have decreased as more staff work from home and secondly, the flow of staff in and out the office has become more irregular.
This has dramatically altered the landscape for companies that offer coffee machines and services.
In many companies, large coffee vending machines have become outdated and uneconomical to run given that the 20-50 cups a day that were needed to make them viable, are simply not being consumed. We also know from speaking to office managers, that staff working from home during the Covid-19 period spent more time in coffee shops for meetings and to access good internet, and they now appreciate the need for better quality office coffee.
It’s why we think the Mythos Duo Touch coffee machine has an important role to play in offices going forward.
First, this automatic coffee machine uses fresh milk to make coffee drinks. While office managers may have preferred the simplicity of powdered milk (which doesn’t need management as it lasts more than a week inside a coffee vending machine), the reality is that coffee tastes are increasingly demanding fresh milk. The problem of excess consumption of that fresh milk, mainly by staff using the milk for their morning cereal or even drinking it straight, has been dealt with by attaching lockable coolers to the coffee machine. These also keep the milk safe and hygienic at around 8 degrees Celsius for a full day.
Second, this coffee machine can make the range of coffee drinks you can get at the local coffee shop. So anything from espresso, through flat white, cappuccino or latte are on the easy-to-use digital screen. You simply scroll across the screen, identify your choice and touch the icon. The machine grinds the coffee beans, produces the coffee and if your drink needs milk, the auto-frother will apportion either steamed or frothed milk into the cup.
It takes no skill! So forget having to hire someone who can grind, tamp, and create wonderful espresso or who has spent hours learning how to froth fine micro-foam for that perfect cappuccino! All you have to do is keep its 1kg coffee bean hopper full, connect the milk line from the cooler to the machine and empty the coffee ground box every 30 or so cups.
The big advantage of the Mythos Duo is that it has two pumps that allow both coffee and milk to be dispensed at the same time. This reduces the time to make coffee and keeps the drink hotter for longer.
Being fully programmable, the settings of each drink can be fine-tuned for the general taste of the office staff, but the Mythos Duo Touch also allows the user to modify each drink as it is being made, to suit the user’s taste.
The final advantage of this coffee machine is its cost and cost of operation. The Mythos Duo Touch gives you a capability to serve a coffee every minute. That’s around 50 coffees an hour given some down time to refill milk, empty grounds and wash out the drip tray. So in an office setting, you can easily have one machine serving 50 staff. Whether your preference is to buy a coffee machine or rent a coffee machine for your office, the fact is that this capacity advantage helps to reduce the cost per cup.
Cost per cup is a very important metric to office managers and the procurement department. Say the cost of 1kg of coffee beans is R250 and you use 10g of coffee per cup, that’s R2.50 per cup. Add 50ml of milk per cup at R15/l, and 10g of sugar at R20/kg and you are at R4-20 for a cup of coffee. Not bad considering if Sally or Pete head out the office for a coffee at the local coffee shop, they are paying R30 for a cappuccino…. plus as an office manager you get to pay for their lost productivity!
Then we get to the coffee machine cost. If you buy or rent a coffee machine that is too large, you end up paying for capacity that is not used. So a R70 000 coffee machine, which would probably be rented at R3000-00 per month, and can serve 100 cups a day, is going to add R3-00 per cup when just 50 cups are consumed a day. Now when you buy or hire a Mythos Duo at roughly half the cost, that will be just R1-50 a cup, or it allows you a leeway in usage of down to 25 cups without costing you more than your big machine would. Better still… if 100 cups are used a day, that is just R0.75 per cup!
So making coffee for R5-00 per cup is really good value in the office, but making sure you have the right sized machine for your situation is clearly critical. In fact, as critical as making sure the machine serves the quality and range of hot coffee beverages your staff deserve.
The functionality of the Mythos Duo Touch at below R35 000 (including a milk cooler) for outright purchase or around R1500 per month on a 36-month rental, and its ability to serve over 100 cups of coffee a day, at around make us confident that it really is the perfect office coffee machine. If you feel a smaller machine would suffice, then why not look at the Mythos X1?
Why not try it out for yourself? We’ll deliver a demo machine, and you can test the different drinks to see just how good they are. When you share your staff numbers, we’ll do the maths and give you all the information you need to see what you’ll be getting for your budget. If you want to look at whether this is the machine for your office, why not assess it using our “How to Choose an Office Coffee Machine” article.