With the price of takeaway coffees shooting up on the high street, there’s never been a better time to invest in a bean-to-cup coffee machine for the workplace.
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Easing financial pressures at home is a hot topic amongst people all over the UK. Many are taking cost-cutting measures, whether it be using an air fryer instead of an oven, turning to discount stores for groceries, bringing packed lunches to work – or axing expensive coffee shop drinks and snacks.
Your staff will love it when you install a bean-to-cup coffee machine that produces barista-quality espressos, flat whites and cappuccinos without them having to leave the building or hand over their hard-earned cash.
Fun fact: the latest technology behind commercial bean-to-cup coffee machines is so good that they produce hot drinks better, faster and more reliably than the typical high street coffee chain. What better way to boost staff morale and make employees feel valued during these challenging economic times?!
But while office coffee machines are a smart investment any day, when money’s tight all round, it’s important to identify the most advantageous way to finance your new machine. How do you know whether it’s better to rent, lease or buy?
Should you rent, lease or buy an office coffee machine?
Simple formulas are great however there was no global meeting of finance experts who decided definitively whether it is better to rent, lease or buy an office coffee machine.
Truth is: the best way to finance a bean-to-cup machine varies from organisation to organisation. And each solution has its benefits and disadvantages.
Renting
A flexible approach that spreads the cost and avoids a large initial outlay. You pay a quarterly charge for a designated period of time to rent rather than purchase the machine outright. Rental contract periods are generally shorter so you can stop or change the package whenever circumstances change.
This rental option is often used with refurbished equipment and is taken out directly with the service provider.
We find our rental customers particularly value the flexibility of a short term rental agreement. It can be useful if there is a period of uncertainty in terms of requirements or if you’re looking for a short-term solution prior to an office move or other anticipated change further down the line.
Leasing
With leasing you pay a monthly or quarterly amount to a leasing company but ownership of the machines never passes to you. After a fixed period (let’s say: three years) the original machine can be replaced with an upgraded model that you then continue leasing. This means you always benefit from the latest drinks technology.
More than that, leasing is a great option for company cash flow and it offers tax benefits. Bonus: you don’t have the worry of disposing of, or recycling the machine, at the end of its life; if you lease from Roast & Ground, that’s our responsibility.
When you lease a coffee machine we will also set up a maintenance contract so that you have excellent ongoing technical support. Astute preventative maintenance and regular checks are the key to serving reliably delicious coffee (and other drinks) day after day, cup after cup.
We also provide phone and email support, as well as use Telemetry on our Rex-Royal coffee machines. This often means issues can be fixed remotely, without the need for an engineer to be on site. When you do need someone to attend, we have industry-leading call-out support from engineers who are trained experts in our machines.
This is a world away from calling a random repair person who has no experience with your specific machine.
Perhaps the best advantage of leasing is that when it comes time to hand back the machine, you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade to a brand new model at a similar price, keeping you at the cutting edge of freshly roasted bean-to-cup technology and enjoying the delicious rewards.
Buying Outright
Buying outright obviously means you own your machine from the start. The advantage here is that your business can claim capital allowances against the purchase and you have a long-term asset. It’s also generally a lower cost long-term as you will pay the market price at the point of purchase and less over the course of the machine’s life.
When buying a new commercial coffee machine it’s important to make sure you have a parts and labour service contract in place. Looking after your machine not only keeps it operating at its best day to day, it ensures it has a good lifespan.
Other important financial considerations
You know that whatever is everyone’s responsibility is no one’s responsibility? For hassle-free peace of mind, even though we provide free training in cleaning at the point of installation and after, many companies find it easiest to assign the responsibility for cleaning their machine to us rather than their own staff members.
That’s why we provide an optional range of cleaning services that are billed quarterly. Regular cleaning is essential from a hygiene point of view but also keeps the machine working at its best, reduces wear and tear, and ensures your coffee always tastes fabulous.
Fortunately, a lot of machines today come with self-cleaning features that take care of tasks like flushing the pipes for coffee and milk. However, there are other more detailed requirements such as cleaning the steam nozzle or milk frother and mixing bowl that are important to do in order to keep your machine running smoothly. If you’d like a hand with this, we offer customers a daily /weekly /monthly hygiene service.
Our maintenance and breakdown service contracts ensure things run smoothly if anything goes wrong with your machine. A quarterly charge covers on-site labour and repair parts. We also change filters once or twice a year, depending on drink volumes, these are charged separately. Again, these things need to be factored into the overall budget.
Of course you will need to budget for your monthly consumables. Most service providers will supply consumables as part of their agreement with you. If you already provide free drinks to staff you’ll most likely know the number of cases of beans/chocolate/granulated milk etc., as well as cleaning materials you use on a monthly basis. If not a quick discussion with one of the team and we’ll soon have you on the right track for budgeting purposes.
At Roast & Ground, our mission is to supply workplaces with coffee that’s as good as (or better than) that on the high street, so we are always happy to help find the right set up for you. If you want to discuss anything, we’re only a chat, phone call or email away.
