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Hybrid work has changed the way offices feel. Some days are calm. On other days it’s full-on, the meeting rooms are stacked, and the kitchen gets backed up fast.
The coffee area is often the first place it shows.
If your busiest days mean queues, empty milk, or staff heading out for a takeaway, the setup is probably geared for quieter days instead of the busy ones.
Step one: spot your real “rush” windows
Hybrid patterns create predictable spikes. It might be mid-week. It might be tied to team days. It might even be linked to client meetings.
Instead of guessing, do a quick check for a week:
- When do people actually line up?
- Which meetings trigger a wave of drinks?
- Does it happen twice a day, or is there one main rush that causes the trouble?
That tells you more than headcount. A 25-person office can put a machine under pressure if everyone is in on the same two days and breaks happen at the same time.
Choose for peak days, not average days
A lot of offices plan around “typical” use. Hybrid work means typical is misleading.
What matters is whether your machine can cope on the days the office is full and everyone wants a drink at once.
Cuco’s bean-to-cup range is built for workplaces, with models that scale depending on demand:
- Cuco 50 suits smaller offices and meeting areas, with a strong drinks menu for mixed tastes.
- Cuco 100 is a good step up for growing teams and busier kitchens.
- Cuco 200 is built for higher footfall and heavier daily use.
If your busiest days are causing queues, stepping up in capacity usually fixes the problem faster than any “please stagger breaks” message ever will.
Placement is half the battle
Even a great machine will feel slow if it’s in the wrong spot.
Hybrid offices often follow a few patterns:
- people arrive and head straight to the kitchen
- meeting rooms create mini rushes
- teams cluster in certain zones (especially on anchor days)
If your kitchen is far from meeting rooms, coffee traffic can end up cutting across the office all day. That’s when people get irritated, not because coffee is hard, but because it interrupts everything else.
A simple approach that tends to work:
- keep the main machine where footfall is already highest
- avoid placing it beside quiet rooms or call pods
- if meetings drive demand, consider a second coffee point closer to those rooms
You do not need to turn the office into a coffee bar. You just need coffee to be where people already are.
Stock and routine matter more on hybrid schedules
Hybrid offices can look fine on quiet days, then fall apart on busy ones. That usually comes down to supplies and small tasks, not the machine itself.
Peak-day problems often come from:
- running out of beans or milk faster than expected
- drip trays filling quickly
- cleaning being left until “later” (and later never comes)
The goal is simple: anyone can use it, and it stays neat without becoming another thing to manage.
Keep the offer inclusive
Hybrid days bring in more variety too. People are back in the office. Visitors drop in. Some people stick with tea. Others are on coffee. And there’s always a few who want something else.
A wider hot drinks menu helps. It stops the “there’s nothing for me here” moment and it reduces people leaving the building just to grab something different.
If you want to round out the setup, a few extras can make busy days easier:
They are simple add-ons, but they cut down on small annoyances that show up when the office is busiest.
A simple way to decide
Here’s an easy way to think about it.
Base the setup on your busiest day. Then make sure it still feels calm.
That might mean:
- choosing a higher-capacity model than you thought you needed
- moving the machine to a better location
- adding a second machine so meeting traffic does not hit the main kitchen
- tightening up the restock and cleaning routine
Once peak days feel smooth, the quieter days take care of themselves.
How we support hybrid offices in Ireland
Hybrid weeks can be unpredictable. Some days the office is half-full. Then mid-week hits and the kitchen gets busy fast. We make sure the coffee setup handles the busy days, without adding extra jobs for your team.
If you’d like to try it properly, we can install a machine for a free one-week trial so your team can use it during a normal week. We also offer a free coffee tasting in your office, where we make the drinks on site, show how the machine works, and talk through the packages in plain terms.
Once you’re up and running, we keep it steady with weekly servicing, plus next-day delivery for coffee. And because office patterns change, we keep things flexible, with three-month contracts available on our Irish packages.
The aim is simple. Your busiest day should feel like a normal day.
Ready for Smoother Peak Days
It’s the busy days that test your setup. Make sure it holds up when everyone’s in.
Want help choosing? Get in touch and we’ll point you to the right machine for your office.
