Something's Brewing in Office Coffee

Sam Fleming, founder and president of Fleming-AOD, a small Silver Spring company that processes billing data for hospitals, has an "adoration verging on worship" for his office espresso maker, a sleek Italian job made by Saeco that brews espresso, Spanish-style coffee and caffe americano. "The machine measures and grinds the beans, tamps it down, infuses it with a small amount of water to release oils and flavors, then pumps the rest of the water through the grind. The whole operation takes 25 seconds. Then the machine cleans and resets itself," Fleming says.

Fleming drinks black coffee and prefers espresso, which tastes stronger than American coffee and has less caffeine. "You don't put milk in red wine, do you?" he asks, adding that if he craves a cappuccino, the Saeco also steams fresh milk.

Fleming keeps two of the $1,400 machines in the office -- when one needs servicing, he is covered. He buys beans from Mayorga, the custom roaster with half a dozen retail locations, most in Montgomery County.

For those who don't want all the fuss, Michael Butz, president and founder of Peakland Coffee Service in Beltsville, has built a thriving business selling coffee to offices. According to the business journal Automatic Merchandiser, office coffee service nationally was a $3.39 billion business in 2004, and it is growing.

Peakland customers have their choice of coffee makers, including a high-tech, one-cup machine similar to the Saeco or an air-pot brewing system that pours fresh coffee into thermoses, thus ending the acrid smell of office coffee boiling to death on an electric burner.

Butz says new customers are often looking to upgrade the coffee service in the executive suite, overlooking the high-end coffee aspirations of lower-level employees. But eventually, folks on other floors follow their noses to the good stuff. In the interest of office morale, many clients eventually decide to offer everyone the higher-quality brew.

Butz sells three brands of coffee -- Gevalia, Starbucks and Quartermaine, the last roasted in Rockville and available at Quartermaine's Bethesda store and at its Rockville roasting plant. "We run taste tests for our employees and our customers. Quartermaine always wins. It's a rich, smooth coffee that's easier on the stomach than Starbucks," he says.

Though some prefer other brands and some accuse Starbucks of overroasting, the Starbucks name has tremendous cachet. Many employers throughout the region insist on Starbucks coffee and pay extra for paper goods embossed with the Starbucks logo -- to please employees and impress visitors. One such company is K12 Inc., a McLean publisher of print and computer-based curricula with a staff of 200-plus employees.

When Fran Roman, director of procurement and administration at K12, introduced free Starbucks coffee four months ago, employees flooded her with grateful e-mails. And no wonder: Many of these employees were paying out of pocket for Starbucks coffee.

Heather Charles, senior finance manager, says before Roman made the upgrade, coffee at K12 "literally made me sick." So she and some co-workers organized a coffee club. Twice a day, a member would fight Northern Virginia traffic to make the run to a Starbucks drive-through. Charles kept a spreadsheet. "I was spending $6 a day for coffee." Others were spending as much as $12 a day. When the office began providing Starbucks, "it was like getting a raise."

According to K12 management, in-house Starbucks is paying for itself in increased productivity. "I was losing up to 40 minutes a day of Heather's time," says Charles's boss, finance chief John F. Baule. "I couldn't afford that."

The cost effectiveness grows, he adds, when you multiply the time lost going out to Starbucks by some proportion of the 200-plus people who work here, he adds.

The fact is, Baule says, that many of the people in his company, himself included, "run on caffeine" -- which may explain why he thinks "for workers today, coffee is a much bigger deal than it was in the past."

Freelance writer Michaele Weissman last wrote for Food about reciprocating dinner invitations.