How Hotels Can Simply Calculate Their Monthly Coffee Requirement

One of the most common problems in hotel F&B procurement is ordering coffee reactively - running low during a peak weekend, over-ordering and sitting on stale stock, or simply not knowing how much to budget.
The fix is a simple calculation that takes less than the time you take to finish your coffee and helps eliminate guesswork:

Step 1 — Calculate your daily cup requirement

Start with three numbers: your average room occupancy, your breakfast attachment rate, and your additional service volume.

Rooms × Occupancy rate × Breakfast attachment rate = breakfast cups per day

For example: 200-room hotel at 70% occupancy with 80% breakfast attachment: 200 × 0.70 × 0.80 = 112 breakfast cups per day

Add in-room service, lobby café, and banquet volumes separately:

In-room kettle refills: approximately 0.5 cups per occupied room per day
Lobby café or coffee shop: count from your POS data
Conference and banquet: average cups per event × average events per week ÷ 7

Step 2 — Convert cups to grams

For instant coffee: standard dose is 2-3 grams per cup (for a 150ml cup). Use 2.5g as a starting point.

112 cups × 2.5g = 280g per day for breakfast service alone

For filter coffee (South Indian style): standard dose is 8g per cup.

112 cups × 7-8 g = 896g per day (Higher side)

Step 3 — Calculate monthly requirement

Daily grams × 30 days = monthly requirement in grams ÷ 1000 = monthly requirement in kg

For our 200-room hotel example (instant coffee, breakfast only): 280g × 30 = 8,400g = 8.4 kg per month for breakfast service

Add in-room, café, and banquet volumes for your total monthly procurement figure.

Step 4 — Add a 15% buffer

Hotels should always carry a minimum 15% buffer above calculated requirement — for unexpected occupancy spikes, event additions, and the inevitable miscalculation. Ordering exactly to requirement means running short within 30 days.

8.4 kg × 1.15 = 9.7 kg per month — round up to 10 kg for a clean order quantity.
Filter Coffee is to be adjusted to your service preference.

How Hotels Can Simply Calculate Their Monthly Coffee Requirement