What’s the best solution for meeting room coffee?

We often get asked the above question, so we’re here to talk about coffee in the meeting room. However, in today’s world, the meeting room has taken on a truly new meaning. Before diving right in let’s look at whether meetings are relevant, and how and why we might make use of them.

Are meetings still relevant, and how and why should I have them?

Effective meetings in the office provide a platform for everyone in attendance to discuss, share and solve problems and challenges. There are, of course, lots of occasions when an email, phone call or Zoom will do, but sometimes a face-to-face meeting is really beneficial. Face-to-face meetings are difficult to rival for collaboration, supporting strategy, and increasing well-being and are often much better for any of those difficult conversations at work.

However, meetings have had a bad rap in the past and unless your meeting is planned efficiently with a clear agenda in place, you could end up wasting your and your teams’ valuable time. It’s reported that one company spent 300,000 hours a year on a single weekly meeting. Shall we go round the room and see how we all feel about that?!

Zoom and other video calls are now firmly established in modern workplace culture, in part thanks to lockdowns, and it’s true that the traditional meeting is not dead! In fact, in our experience, we’re seeing more and more people coming back to the traditional office.

We take a look at how meetings have changed and what the best solution is to keep your team happy and hydrated with coffee in your meeting room.

What’s the best coffee for my meeting room?

As we’ve mentioned planning your meeting carefully is the first step in securing a successful outcome. You’ll need to first identify a clear purpose, create an agenda and decide where and when to hold the meeting and confirm the availability of the space. Read a full checklist of what to do before you hold a meeting.

Remember that where you hold the meeting tends to set the tone. A formal boardroom with executive-style seating will have a different vibe from a catch-up coffee meeting in the breakout area. Meetings have now changed to include what’s known as hybrid meetings. “A hybrid meeting is a meeting where a part of the audience joins from the office and another part joins remotely, enabled by audio and video conferencing technology with a strong focus on content sharing.”

One thing is for certain, wherever or whenever the meeting is held in person, it will definitely help if you provide a quality coffee experience. Coffee is considered to be a social lubricant so it’s unheard of to hold a meeting without coffee and water – that’s why we suggest you do need to pay considerable attention to this.

Filter coffee machines

Filter coffee machines are a great way to provide freshly brewed coffee, quickly and conveniently to your team, customers, visitors and suppliers. They’re one of the most traditional coffee machines and they’re super simple to use with minimum fuss and maintenance. They don’t make a lot of noise like some machines do so they’re a good choice for meeting rooms where people are trying to present and talk. They’ll also keep your coffee warm for a couple of hours.

Filter coffee machines are reasonably priced to purchase, rent or get on free loan agreements. There are lots of models to choose from and some can brew up to 5 litres of coffee or even more so if you’ve got a large meeting, they’re a great choice. Talking of choice though, they’ll focus on making only pure filter coffee so you can’t provide a range of coffee drinks like cappuccinos, lattes and so on from a pour-over office coffee filter machine.

Bean to cup machines

Bean to cup machines are the most popular choice for office coffee machines but would one be right for use in your meeting? They combine a coffee grinder, espresso maker, and a milk frother all in one. They’re really easy to operate and would give your meeting guests and attendees a wide choice of drinks from espressos, americanos, cappuccinos, lattes and more. Because they use either fresh or granular milk, they do need to be cleaned regularly and some people comment that having the noise and distraction of a coffee machine inside the meeting room is not always the best idea.

Bean to cup machines work by grinding whole coffee beans, heating the water and then dispensing hot water over the freshly ground beans. As the coffee is ground on demand, you’ll only get the freshest, great-tasting coffee from a bean to cup machine.

Coffee pod machines

Another great choice of coffee machine for small to medium-sized meeting rooms is a coffee pod machine. These machines are fantastic at delivering fresh coffee each time, as each coffee is made from a sealed coffee pod on demand. A comment we have had fed back to us about coffee pods is the big choice can sometimes be confusing for those in the meeting room, and that the use of a pod each time can lead to excessive wastage so not always ideal.

Catering your meeting

Much like getting a team in to deliver snacks and refreshments, you could also offer table service for coffee for your meetings. In this case, your meeting guests and attendees will simply make their coffee choice and a member of staff will serve it to them. It’s more formal of course, but this may be more convenient.

Our advice?

Keep it simple. If a filter coffee machine will provide your meeting with quality, hot coffee to be enjoyed, then there’s no need to overcomplicate things. However, like anything, it depends on you and your teams’ specific needs so if you need any further advice on what type of coffee is best to serve in your meetings, simply get in touch with our team.