Businesses Are Stepping Up Their Break Room Coffee Game

I used to work in an office. It sucked. On top of dealing with the daily existential crises — which were actually a nice change of pace from the general ennui of the nine-to-five life — the coffee was god-awful. But the Wall Street Journal reports that in a growing number of offices, the days of shitty break room coffee are coming to an end.

Businesses are having to invest more in their coffee thanks to “the tight labor market,” according to Bob Friedman, president of Coffee Distributing Corp. in New York. Friedman tells the Wall Street Journal:

If they think they can go cheap and not have any coffee, or provide crappy coffee, they quickly find no one will work there.

Whereas companies were once spending 15¢ per cup for the run-of-the-mill batch brew-type break room coffee, they are now spending 30 to 70¢ per cup for single serve options (K Cups not pour overs) and $1.50 for cold brew.

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Some offices are even taking it a step further by hiring a full-time on-site barista, “the ultimate declaration of coffee love” according to the article. The New York office for marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi, for instance, has an in-house café that offers a full menu of coffee offerings at a company-subsidized price. We’ve covered high-end coffee experiences at Digg, Betaworks, Square, and Evernote.

But it’s not just marketing firms and tech companies that are looking to hire full-time baristas. As of writing this article, there are postings on Sprudge Jobs for barista positions with Boar’s Head in Chicago and Credia Karma in San Francisco, the latter being a multi-roaster café.

There’s hope yet for those still languishing in the oily doldrums of bad break room coffee. As more businesses see the value in investing in better coffee, others will surely follow just trying to keep pace. Until then, bringing you own coffee and a hand grinder and learning a little Mr. Coffee ingenuity will go a long way in making your eight hours a day in your cubicle tomb more bearable. And the ritual of making coffee is a better use of 15 minutes than explaining to Jordan for the fifth time how the VLOOKUP function in Excel works. IT’S NOT THAT DIFFICULT, JORDAN!

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network.

*top image via the Wall Street Journal