Gourmet Coffee Becomes
The Latest Office Perk

Many employers are also investing in single-serve machines that make everything from coffee and specialty espresso drinks to hot chocolate and allow employees to brew one fresh cup at a time.

Keurig B3000. The machine is meant for large offices. Features include a large screen that provides user instructions and four brew sizes.

Some employers say they are upgrading their coffee as an added perk for employees who are spending long hours at the office. "The people who love their Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts are going to go no matter what, but when people are working around the clock, it's important to have coffee that they like and that tastes good and is convenient for them," says Norma Hanson, a business manager in the Boston office of the law firm Holland & Knight LLP, which recently installed machines by Flavia, a division of Mars Inc., on every floor.

Last summer, Microsoft upgraded from automatic-drip coffee to the Starbucks Interactive Cup Brewer -- which brews single cups -- on each floor of every one of its buildings nationwide.

"It's made coffee a topic of conversation," says John Montgomery, a group program manager on the company's Redmond, Wash., campus -- especially among the "coffee snobs," or those who attend coffee tastings. "I learned a huge amount about coffee."

Mr. Montgomery conducted a personal taste test comparing the Farmer Brothers Co. coffee the company previously offered, the Starbucks blend in the new machines, and the Allegro French Roast he bought at a Whole Foods store and uses in the coffee maker he keeps in his office. He preferred the Whole Foods coffee. "What it came down to was the Allegro French Roast had a nice, nutty, smooth finish," says Mr. Montgomery, 39, who drinks 10 to 12 cups per day.

Paul Flaherty Plumbing and Heating Co. in Framingham, Mass., now offers employees 15 different flavors of Green Mountain coffee, ranging from the Nantucket Blend to hazelnut, made with a machine by Keurig, a unit of Green Mountain. Plumbers used to relax and have a couple of beers after work in the office break room. Now, some employees kick back with a cup of coffee instead.

It also helps increase worker productivity by keeping employees from making too many coffee runs, says Paul Flaherty, the company's president.

Starbucks Interactive Cup Brewer. Geared toward offices of 50 or more. Brews single cups of Starbucks coffee.

Before the company upgraded to specialty coffee a few months ago, two 10-cup coffee makers filled with bitter-tasting sludge were set up in the kitchen. "It was gross," says Jody White, a 37-year-old plumber. "You didn't know how long it had been sitting there."

Five years ago, "office coffee was definitely the ugly stepchild in the coffee industry," says Mike Ferguson, spokesman for the Specialty Coffee Association of America, a trade group with about 2,500 member companies. Now, he says, specialty roasters are increasingly selling their coffees to employers either directly or through office coffee services.

The trend first surfaced at larger corporations, but has now trickled down to a variety of industries -- a result of the rising availability of single-serve coffee machines, more suitable for smaller employers. Some 140,000 offices use Flavia's single-serve drink machines, up from 40,000 in 2002. Keurig has seen sales of its single-serve machine to offices increase from 10,000 in 2002 to 45,000 in 2006.

While Starbucks doesn't break out sales of its office coffee segment, the company says 3,700 of its Interactive single-cup brewers, which were introduced in 2004, are being used in offices.

Yet many employees who prefer to go off premises say a quick trip to the coffee shop gives them a much-needed break from work. "It's a simple pleasure," says Matt Stitzer, a lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York, who leaves his office every day after lunch to take a walk and buy coffee at the Starbucks in the lobby.

"A lot of people go downstairs to the Starbucks, partners included," says Mr. Stitzer, 28 years old, even though the company sells Starbucks coffee in its cafeteria and has coffee machines in its offices.

Indeed, Mr. Stitzer's colleague Abby Gordon, 30, who was drinking a vanilla latte at a Starbucks on a recent Monday morning, says she rarely sees anyone get coffee out of the office machine. It makes an obnoxious rumbling noise while dispensing anything but hot water. "It's so loud," she says. "I don't want to disrupt 10 people sitting around me."

Another factor: Coffee bars -- with their huge drink selections, servers and trendy accouterments -- have an allure an office cafeteria or machine, no matter how sophisticated, can't match.

"I prefer to go to the Starbucks for the bourgeois snobbery," says Michael Corbett, a sales assistant at New York-based Modern Publishing, a division of Unisystems Inc., who visits the coffee shop down the block from his office regularly. He says he has opted to shell out for a coffee drink at the Seattle-based chain since his days as a teenage mall rat in Dublin, Ohio. His current favorite: a tall skim chai latte.

Mr. Corbett, 24, used to take 15-minute coffee breaks at the nearby Starbucks in the mornings until his boss asked him to stop. "It was more or less a mini-vacation," he says. "I try not to do that anymore."

Higher-level managers such as Joe Garber also say they enjoy getting out of the building, though they may take their work along with them. Mr. Garber, the 63-year-old president of Woodrow Funding & Management Corp., a financial-services firm in New York, likes to go to a nearby coffee shop and spend 15 or 20 minutes working there instead of in the office. "I can disappear amongst the crowds, sit at a table and make calls on the phone," he says. He occasionally takes a newspaper with him to peruse the sports section.

Some bosses who have upgraded their office system have found that higher-end coffee makers can bring their own set of problems. Late last year, SpineUniverse LLC, a Wheaton, Ill., medical-education company, purchased a Starbucks Barista machine -- which can make lattes, cappuccino and espresso -- so that people could save money on going outside for coffee.

Unfortunately, the machine turned out to be too complicated for Jeremy Longhurst, 40, the company's president. Although he has stuck Post-Its on the kitchen walls to help remember how to use it, he continues to have accidents. He has had hot water shoot onto his pants three times while he has tried to brew a cup.

Now, while the rest of the employees use the machine, he still goes to the Starbucks around the corner, he says. "If I look pitiful enough, employees will take pity on me and make me a cup."

Recently, the machine got clogged with too many coffee grinds and was plastered with an "out of order" sign until an employee cleaned it with lemon juice, water, and a paper clip. "I'm beginning to hate the thing," Mr. Longhurst says.

Write to Anjali Athavaley at anjali.athavaley@wsj.com²