If you're considering hiring an office coffee service to provide coffee and beverages for your office or just beginning to investigate the options provided by an office coffee service, you'll find that office coffee services provide far more than just coffee. When your business partners with a company that provides office coffee service, you'll be able to choose from a wide variety of services and items ranging from coffee makers to vending machines, equipment and supplies for your coffee or break room, coffee and other beverages and even snacks. Here's a quick tour of what you might expect a typical office coffee service to provide for your office or place of business.

The typical office break room has a coffee maker that is meant for home use. Unless you've only got a couple of people drinking coffee over the course of the day, you'll find yourself replacing that coffee maker far more often than you would at home. Professional office coffee services generally will offer a wide choice of coffee makers to suit the way your office drinks coffee. Your choice of coffee maker will vary from provider to provider, but most offer several choices that include standard drip coffee makers, espresso machines, single serve coffee machines, semi and fully automatic coffee makers and even vending machines.

These days, the most common coffee maker choices are single-serve coffee systems like Keurig, Flavia or Senseo. Single serve coffee makers cut down on maintenance and clean-up by brewing one cup of coffee at a time using a self-contained coffee ?capsule? or cup. Some of these are connected directly to the plumbing so that even filling the water receptacle is a simple matter of turning a tap. Single serve coffee systems offer a number of advantages over coffee makers that brew by the pot. Perhaps the biggest advantage is that each employee or client can make a different kind of coffee without having to brew up a full pot. If your secretary loves her Rainforest Hazelnut, the rest of the office isn't stuck drinking up the rest of the pot.

The cost of the coffee machine will often depend upon two factors: the type of machine and the volume of coffee that you order from the coffee service each month. Many coffee service companies provide a standard coffee machine for free as long as you continue to order your coffee and other supplies through them. Often, however, you can continue to rent the machine for a small monthly fee even if you buy your own coffee to use in the machine.

In addition to the coffee machine, coffee services also deliver coffee to your office on a pre-determined schedule. If you've chosen a pour-over pot or drip machine, the coffee will usually be packaged in pre-measured one-pot pouches. If you've chosen a single-serve coffee system, you'll be able to order coffee in single serving coffee pods (K-cups, T-cups or other pod types depending on the coffee brewer supplied by the company). In either case, you'll usually find that having coffee available to your employees in pre-measured pouches cuts down on waste and reduces the amount of coffee that's used per cup.

In addition to coffee, many coffee services also carry tea and hot chocolate, and some also provide soups that can be made with hot water. In fact, if you're renting a single serve coffee system like the Keurig from your office coffee service, you'll probably be able to order their entire range of beverages through your service provider.

Some coffee service companies also offer a range of snacks for your office break room. The snacks offered by your coffee service may include bags of chips and pretzels as well as individually packaged bagels, doughnuts, croissants and muffins. The companies that provide snacks may also provide other individually packaged items like jams and jellies, butter pats, coffee creamers and cream cheese. Many offices find that providing these in sanitary individual packages cuts down on waste and is more economical than buying them at the supermarket.

What happens if your coffee carafe shatters or your machine needs servicing? Office coffee services provide all service for your coffee machine, including replacement parts and repair. In most cases, if your coffee machine malfunctions the coffee service will provide you with a replacement for it if it can't be repaired in place. You can usually set up a service contract with your provider and let them take care of regular maintenance like cleaning, de-scaling and replacing filters and other parts on a regular schedule.

When choosing an office coffee service, be sure that you ask to see their full catalog of supplies and services. Compare all costs of using the coffee service with the costs of providing a similar level of coffee service on your own to help you decide if a coffee service is the best option for your office.