How much coffee to order for a café, restaurant or office

Buying coffee for your business explains how ordering from us works: accounts, cases, samples, payment and delivery. This guide is about the order itself: how much coffee a venue or an office gets through, and which coffee to put in it.

Start from cups a day

Every estimate begins with the number of cups you serve in a day and the way you make them. As a guide, allow 7 g for a single espresso and 16 g for a double, 7 g to 12 g in a bean-to-cup machine depending on its setting, 15 g for a 250 ml cup of filter coffee, and one capsule per cup; the figures are in How much coffee to use. For beans or ground coffee, multiply cups a day by grams a cup and by opening days, then divide by 1,000 for kilograms; for capsules, multiply cups a day by opening days. For example, 100 double espressos a day at 16 g each over 26 opening days comes to about 42 kg for the month, before waste. Count extra shots separately, and allow for dialling in and waste. Use the usage estimate on the business page to plan quantities. An estimate at a typical dose. Your machine, grind and recipe will move it.

An espresso bar

Cafés and restaurants usually settle on one rung of the Vergnano ladder for the house espresso and sometimes a second for milk drinks. The 1 kg bags are the format; a bag makes about 60 double shots at 16 g. Add a decaf beside the house coffee, the Decaffeinato in 1 kg beans, and, if the bar sells hot chocolate, the Vergnano instant hot chocolate sachets and the sugar sticks come from the same range. We are an authorised UK distributor of Caffè Vergnano 1882.

An office

Start with the office’s machine and its daily cups. For a bean-to-cup machine, 1 kg beans: at a standard setting of about 9 g a cup, a bag makes about 110 cups, so a team drinking 50 cups a day gets through roughly a bag every two working days. FAP Classico and Decaffeinato come in boxes of 100, for FAP-system machines only; the four Nespresso-compatible coffees come in boxes of 10, for Nespresso Original machines only, not Vertuo; allow one capsule per cup. For filter and batch brewing, 60 g per litre of water is a conventional starting point. Jura cleaning and descaling tablets are on the site; check your machine’s manual before choosing cleaning products.

Planning the order

Count the house coffee and the decaf separately within the total, allow for extra shots and waste, and review the estimate against actual use before the next order. Regular customers can share a forecast; reserving a quantity of a standard product is a separate agreement (FAQ). For case sizes, accounts, samples, payment and delivery, see Buying coffee for your business. Venues serving Caffè Vergnano can ask about branded cups, counter materials and signage; arrangements are agreed case by case.

Where to start

Start with the Coffee Finder for Business, then use the usage estimate to plan the monthly quantity. Then order online, or email us with the machine and the numbers and we will put a first order together with you.

Reviewed 7 September 2026.