I just finished making a coffee with our office coffee machine, a Breville ES400 Espresso machine (it does the job!) and it got me thinking about how much of a work horse this little thing has been.

At The Frontier Group, everyone loves coffee. Some people love it more than others, and some people more specifically love the caffeine more than the coffee itself. In any case, everyone at The Frontier Group drinks coffee.

When I started here almost three years ago, we used to go to the local coffee shop a few times a day. It was lucky that they produce some of the best coffee in Perth, and at least at that time, were probably the making the best coffeee in Perth.

However three or four coffees a day can quite easily eat into your weekly budget, not to mention the inconvenience of having to walk up the road to get it.

So we bought a coffee machine. Nothing fancy, but not completely entry level. We figured that it’ll be put through it’s paces, we enjoy our coffee and so we wanted a machine that could cope, and cope it has. After two years of use only the gasket on the group head needs replacing, and that’s really only been noticeable in the last month or so! It’s literally been trouble free.

However, down to the post topic, how much money have we saved? I thought the following sums were pretty interesting.

Coffees Made: 2 years x 48 weeks x 5 days x (approx) 8 coffees/day ~ 3800 coffees
Coffee Used: 3800 coffees * 16g/coffee ~ 62kg of coffee
Milk Used: 3800 coffees * 250mL/coffee ~ 950L of milk
Coffee Cost: 62kg @ $50/kg = $3100
Milk Cost: 950L @ $2.20/L = $2100

So we’ve gone through 62Kg of coffee in the last two years, and 950L of milk. I think that’s pretty crazy!!

Now to the costings.

Equivalent Cost at Cafe: 3800 coffees @ $4.40/coffee ~$16,500
Our Cost for Coffees: $3100 + $2100 = $5,200
Saving:$16,500 – $5,200 = $11,300

The machine itself cost $400, and there’s sugar and that sort of thing I guess, but all in all we’re looking at a solid $10,000 saving over the last two years. That’s not even including the saved time in not having to walk down the road and that sort of thing.

Our little workhorse is a silver box that sits in the corner and saves us money :)