When your company is about to dip its collective toes into the world of office coffee in NYC, there are plenty of questions to consider. Questions including “What does an office coffee service provide?”, “Where can we find a great one?”, and “What products can we get and how do we make the right choice?”
Instead of getting overwhelmed with all the choices and possibilities, take some great advice from the coffee experts here at Corporate Essentials. We have put this quick, five-step guide together to help you find your way through the maze of office coffee services for your New York office.
Research
As with most projects, the first step toward finding the best office coffee service for your New York office is researching the office coffee options available to you. So open up that web browser and hit the search engines – and then, ask people you know in other companies about the office coffee distributor they use. The objective of step one is to make a list of all the office coffee places that could potentially cater to the needs of your break room.
Recommendations
Step two will help you narrow the field, take your huge list of NYC office coffee providers and learn what you can about their reputations. Check for online reviews on multiple sites and look for client testimonials on the vendors’ own websites – but do bear in mind there are two sides to every story.
The most important recommendations you will find for the NYC office coffee service companies you are evaluating will be those that come directly from people you know. There is little more valuable than word of mouth when it comes to the quality of food, beverages and service that you will be bringing into the office. So take the time and ask your colleagues at other companies in your area what their coffee service is like, their answers may surprise you.
Offerings
Once you have had some good (and unfortunately bad) reviews and recommendations from people you know and trust you should be able to shorten that long list of initial office coffee services for your NYC office. Now, you can use this third step to cut your list down to a few amazing coffee providers. Review the office coffee product portfolios of the companies that you have on your short list and carefully consider:
- Variety: office coffee may be something that is bought in bulk and shared with a large number of people, but the way we take our coffee is a highly personal thing. Because we all like what we like, it is important to offer a solid variety of products in your break room to cater to as many tastes as possible.
- Quality: a wide selection of ho-hum office coffee products is going to impress no one – what’s worse is the office coffee will not have the pull that can unite your staff by creating an engaging and inspiring break room environment.
- Specialty: having a solid variety of top-quality products is a great start, but having specialty local and/or seasonal items available on the office coffee menu gives your office an opportunity to personalize things to an ideal level.
- Local: one of the biggest benefits to working with a great office coffee service in NYC is the ability to invest back in your neighborhood by providing coffee from local roasters to your guests and staff. This is a benefit to you, the hyperlocal economy and your teams, particularly as fresh coffee is the best coffee – and it is hard to get fresh coffee that was roasted yesterday across the street.
A great office coffee company will be more than happy to walk through their standard product offerings with you, highlighting seasonal options and previewing occasional local items that are likely to be available. The beauty of this is that you are able to consider the product offerings with others in your office, allowing them to take part in the office coffee service selection process.
Taste
Step four is the personal favorite of most coffee fans here at Corporate Essentials and we are pretty sure you will enjoy it too – step four is the taste test. Any great office coffee service will be more than happy to provide you with samples of the products on their menu that you and your team are interested in ordering.
You can use the taste test as an opportunity to really rally the staff in your NYC office around the idea of building a better breakroom and make the tasting an office-wide event. This gives you the opportunity to schedule tastings at regular intervals throughout the year when new products launch through your office coffee provider – which encourage your teams to remain engaged in the office coffee culture you are working to establish.
Customer Service
In step two of this process, you looked at reviews and recommendations for office coffee companies in NYC. One of the biggest things you probably noticed coffee service companies receiving bad reviews for was poor customer service.
Throughout steps three and four you should get a good feel for the customer service that your potential office coffee provider offers to customers – after all, if they are trying to win your business, they should be pulling out all the stops to impress and woo you, so if you are unable to get their attention in the initial “courtship” phase of the office coffee relationship, the odds are poor you would be able to command their notice in the future.
So consider customer service as an ongoing part of this process, but make sure you do take note of how your office coffee service representative makes you feel as a customer.
The Final Decision
Weighing the five points we have discussed here carefully will help you determine the ultimate champion when it comes to office coffee service for your NYC company. The best thing about choosing an office coffee vendor is that you will be able to breathe a sigh of relief and start enjoying your office coffee almost immediately.
As your staff grows accustomed to saving time and money, collaborating better with teams across the company and enjoying the benefits of more frequent breaks, you will be able to bask in the glow of a job well done.
Reach out and discuss your needs with one of the office coffee gurus at Corporate Essentials today, the rest is simple. And, we promise we will never tell anyone how easy it really was to find the best NYC office coffee.
