Coffee Brewing For A Crowd Without Breaking The Bank (Part 2)

This is a guest post by Steve Ziegler. Learn more about how you can guest post for Daily Shot Of Coffee here.

In part one of this post, I discussed the brewers needed for large group service and now it is time to talk about the actual serving of the coffee. I will be focusing on coffee self-service here, and the first and most important thing you need think about is where to set up your coffee stations, and how many stations to set up. Some things to think about:

• Time of service & number of people: Number of people is an obvious consideration, but many folks neglect thinking about time of service. Both elements are tied together. Will the people be able to serve themselves coffee for a long period of time or a very short period of time? It is easy to serve thirty-five people with one coffee station if they sort of drift into an event on their own, and they are able to get coffee throughout. But take that same thirty-five people and give them 10 minutes between workshops or classes, and with only one coffee station, you have the makings of a disaster. So give these two considerations a good bit of thought before you decide.
• Traffic Flow & Location: It is important to put your coffee station(s) in areas where they are easy to get to, yet not in the way of traffic. I very much suggest you consider a scattering your coffee stations throughout an event, in order to insure that coffee is always nearby and to avoid bottlenecks at the station. Finally, the one thing often forgotten: noise. People, especially those that are somewhat familiar with one another, will tend to talk in a coffee queue. That may or may not be desirable for your event, so keep it in mind.

After locating your coffee stations, you need to set those stations up. But how and with what? We already discussed using airpots vs. percolator urns, and you probably figured out that I am a big proponent of airpots. While there are other ways to do self service coffee, but most violate the “without breaking the bank” part of this post. Here are some more hints for coffee station set up:

• Mark your beverages: Ever been to a coffee station and not know what is decaf or regular? Annoying, right? There are static cling stickers, table tents, and chain tags you can use to mark types of coffee.
• Coffee condiments: If you can, set the condiments off to the side of the coffee, so folks will not hold up traffic when fixing their coffee. Better yet, have a coffee condiment station on either side of your coffee.
  
• Cups: If you are using china, make sure you have dirty cup return areas set up. If you are using disposables, you can go from low end Styrofoam to high-end hard plastic coffee mugs. You can also use paper hot cups, but, since they get hot in the hand, you should either use the insulated paper hot cups, or offer coffee cup jackets. Another consideration for disposable cups is that depending on the crowd, there may be an expectation for you to use , environmentally-friendly coffee cups.
• Milk and cream: The easiest thing to use is powdered, which you can get in bulk or PC (portion control) packs. Liquid creamer PC cups are great, but some need to be kept cold. For this you can use a bowl in ice, or a freezable crock. And of course, you can buy cartons and use some thermal servers; but just make sure that you keep tabs on the temperature, and clean them well afterwards.
• Be creative: While it is easy to just have milk and sugar on the condiment station; things like cinnamon, chocolate powder, honey sticks, nutmeg, agave nectar, and flavored coffee syrups are all things that can spice up your station. Instead of biscotti, why not set out funny fortune cookies or homemade shortbread (inexpensive and only three ingredients)? Or, how about theming each station in a manner having to do with your particular event? Or what about theming the stations as to what type of coffee or condiments are being served?

Whatever you do when serving coffee to a crowd, just take the time to prepare beforehand. Planning saves time, money, and insures a great experience for the folks in that crowd. Most importantly, is when everyone is happy with their coffee service, you’ll be happy too. Enjoy!

Steve Ziegler is the Product Expert at the WEBstaurantStore.com. He has over 20 years experience in the restaurant supplies business, and loves helping restaurateurs and coffee shop owners . He is a long time coffee lover.

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