Picking an office coffee machine sounds like a coffee question. It's really a sizing question. The same bean-to-cup machine that delights a 10-person startup will create a line out the door at a 150-person call center — and the heavy-duty floor unit built for that call center is overkill, and oversized, for the startup's kitchen counter.

This guide maps your headcount to the right class of machine. We'll walk through four office tiers, the machine type and capacity that fits each, the throughput you should plan for, and the practical considerations — water hookup, footprint, service cadence — that matter more as you scale.

Start with throughput, not headcount

Headcount is the input; cups per day is the number that actually sizes a machine. A useful planning assumption is that a regular coffee drinker has two cups over a workday — one on arrival, one in the early afternoon. Not everyone drinks coffee, and not everyone is in the office every day, so a reasonable estimate is:

Daily cups ≈ in-office headcount × 2 × (share who drink coffee)

For a 30-person office where most people come in and most drink coffee, that's somewhere around 45–55 cups a day. Treat these as planning ranges, not guarantees — your real number depends on your team, your hybrid schedule, and whether you also serve tea, hot chocolate, and visitors.

Two other numbers matter alongside the daily total:

Peak rate. Coffee demand isn't smooth. It clusters at the morning arrival window and again after lunch. A machine that can technically produce a day's volume can still bottleneck if everyone wants a cup in the same 20 minutes.
Drink variety. Bean-to-cup machines that pull espresso, brew lungo, and steam milk for lattes and cappuccinos take longer per cup than a simple black coffee. The richer the menu, the more you should lean toward a faster or larger unit.

With that framing, here's how the tiers break down.

Tier 1 — Small teams (5–15 people)

Recommended: a compact, tabletop bean-to-cup machine.

At this size you're making roughly 10–30 cups a day, with a gentle morning peak. You don't need a vending-scale machine, and you don't have the counter space for one. What you want is fresh, real coffee with zero fuss — something that sits on a kitchen counter, plumbs into a tank or a water line, and lets people press a button.

This is exactly where our Piccolo fits. It's a table-top, "small but mighty" unit designed for small and multiple-unit accounts, with a 7-inch touch screen and customizable push-button selections. The footprint is small, the maintenance is light, and a single hopper of beans comfortably carries a team this size through the day.

What to weigh at this tier:

Footprint over capacity. Counter space is your real constraint, not cups. A tabletop unit that tucks under a cabinet wins.
Tank vs. plumbed. A refillable tank means no plumbing work, which is handy in a leased suite — at the cost of someone topping it up.
Simplicity. With a small team there's no facilities manager. Pick something anyone can operate and that we keep stocked and serviced for you.

Tier 2 — Growing offices (15–50 people)

Recommended: a mid-range bean-to-cup machine with plumbed water and a fuller drink menu.

Now you're in the 30–80 cups a day range, the morning and post-lunch peaks are sharper, and people start expecting variety — a flat white here, a cappuccino there, not just drip. The tabletop unit can still cope at the lower end, but as you approach 50 people you'll feel the wait time.

Our Mediano — "perfect balance" — is built for exactly this band. It runs as a tabletop or cabinet configuration, takes a plumbed line or an internal refillable tank, and offers fully customizable beverage selections through a 7-inch touch screen. Plumbing it into a water line removes the refill chore that starts to bite once a team gets past a couple dozen people.

What to weigh at this tier:

Plumb it in. Above ~20 regular drinkers, manual tank refills become a daily nuisance. A direct water connection pays for itself in convenience.
Menu breadth. This is the size where milk-based drinks become a real expectation. Confirm the machine handles the lattes and cappuccinos your team actually wants.
A second unit beats one bigger one. Two floors or two break rooms? Two Medianos placed near where people sit will almost always out-serve a single larger machine parked in one corner.

Tier 3 — Large offices (50–200 people)

Recommended: a full-featured vending-class machine — often more than one, placed by zone.

At 100–300+ cups a day, you've crossed into territory where peak throughput, not daily volume, is the deciding factor. The constraint is the line that forms at 9 a.m. A single machine, however capable, can only pour one drink at a time.

Our Grande — "maximum power" — is the full-featured vending option for this tier: plumbed water, internal cup drop and mug capability, a 15-inch full-HD touch monitor, the widest beverage range, and customizable strength and sugar dosing. It's designed to be the anchor machine for a busy floor.

But the bigger lever at this size is placement and unit count. The right setup for 120 people is usually two or three machines distributed across the floor — a Grande as the main station, plus a Mediano or two near the far desks — rather than one machine everyone walks to. Distributed units flatten the morning peak, shorten walking distance, and give you redundancy if one goes down for service.

What to weigh at this tier:

Design for the peak, not the average. Size around the busiest 30 minutes of the day.
Multiple stations. Spreading machines by zone beats a single big one for wait time and resilience.
Service cadence. More volume means more frequent restocking and cleaning. This is where a managed service contract — beans, milk, maintenance, and repairs handled for you — stops being a nicety and becomes essential.

Tier 4 — Enterprise floors and multi-site (200+ people)

Recommended: a fleet of vending-class machines, zoned by floor or building, on a managed contract.

Past 200 people you're no longer choosing a machine — you're designing a coffee program. Daily volume runs into the many hundreds of cups, demand peaks are unforgiving, and a single point of failure is unacceptable: if your one machine breaks, a lot of people notice.

The answer is a fleet of full-featured units like the Grande, deployed one per floor or per wing, with consistent menus so the experience is the same wherever someone gets their coffee. At this scale the machine model matters less than the operation around it: reliable restocking, proactive maintenance, fast repair response, and usage reporting so you can right-size as the company grows or shrinks.

What to weigh at this tier:

Redundancy by design. Multiple machines per area so a single outage is an inconvenience, not a crisis.
Consistency across sites. Standardize models and menus so every floor and every office feels the same.
A true service partner. Restocking, cleaning, and repairs at this volume are a logistics operation. The vendor relationship is the product.

A quick reference

Office size	Daily cups (approx.)	Machine class	cafeein fit
5–15	10–30	Compact tabletop bean-to-cup	Piccolo
15–50	30–80	Mid-range, plumbed, full menu	Mediano
50–200	100–300+	Full-featured vending, multiple units	Grande (×1–3)
200+	Several hundred+	Zoned fleet on a managed contract	Grande fleet

Use the ranges as a starting point, then adjust for the realities of your office: a hybrid schedule lowers your in-office count, a heavy latte culture raises per-cup time, and visitor traffic, events, or a 24/7 shift pattern can push you up a tier.

The factors that override headcount

Two offices with identical headcounts can need very different machines. Before you commit, sanity-check these:

Hybrid attendance. Size to who's actually in the building on a busy day, not the payroll.
Water and power. A plumbed machine needs a nearby water line and drain; confirm your space supports it, or plan for a tank unit.
Footprint and traffic flow. The best machine in a cramped corner creates a bottleneck. Place units where people can queue without blocking the kitchen.
Service and restocking. Who refills the beans and milk, and who fixes it when it stops? With cafeein, that's us — maintenance and support are part of the package, with no upfront cost for the equipment.

Not sure which tier you're in?

If your office sits on the boundary between two tiers — say, 45 people and growing — it's usually worth sizing up, or splitting into two well-placed machines, rather than running a single unit at its limit.

The fastest way to get it right is to tell us your headcount, your floor layout, and how your team likes its coffee. We'll recommend a specific machine — or a combination — and handle the install, restocking, and service. Get in touch for a free consultation and we'll size your setup with you. You can also browse our machine lineup to see the Piccolo, Mediano, and Grande side by side.