How Many Tea Bags Does an Office Need a Week?

How many teas does an office make in a week?

Start from the allowance our office coffee guide uses: two hot drinks per person per working day, five days a week. Few offices know how many of those are tea, so take half as a planning assumption and correct it once the first box is open. That gives a simple rule: head count × 5 = tea bags a week.

Staff on site	Hot drinks a week	Teas a week	Tea bags a month	Box of 1,100 lasts
10	100	50	200	About 22 weeks
20	200	100	400	About 11 weeks
50	500	250	1,000	About 4 weeks
100	1,000	500	2,000	About 2 weeks
200	2,000	1,000	4,000	About 1 week

Assumptions: two hot drinks per person per working day, five days a week, half of them tea, one bag per cup. A month is counted as four weeks. Weeks per box = 1,100 ÷ teas a week, rounded. Hybrid working cuts the figure — count the people actually in on an average day, not the payroll.

Visitors and contractors add a few cups a day on top, and a newly installed hot water boiler tends to get used more than the kettle it replaced, so expect the first month to run above the table.

One-cup, two-cup or catering bags: which should an office buy?

Trade tea comes in four bag sizes, each built for a different way of making tea.

Bag type	Made for	Makes	Pack size
One-cup bags	A mug at a time at the kitchen counter	One cup	1,100 bags
Two-cup bags	Small teapots and two mugs at once	Two cups	1,100 bags
2-pint catering bags	Teapots, cafetières and flasks	About 4 to 5 mugs	150 bags
4-pint catering bags	Large flasks, urns and tea rounds	About 9 mugs	82 bags

Working: one pint is 568ml, so a 2-pint bag brews about 1,136ml and a 4-pint bag about 2,272ml. At 250ml per mug that is 4.5 and 9.1 mugs. Cup counts for the one-cup and two-cup bags are the maker's own description of each bag.

For a self-serve office kitchen, one-cup bags are the right default: people make one mug, so a two-cup bag in a single mug is a stronger cup and a bag wasted. The catering sizes earn their place where tea is made in bulk — a flask for a meeting, an urn on a training day, or a tea round in a care home.

How much tea for a flask, urn or tea round?

When tea is brewed in bulk, size the bags to the vessel, not the head count. A 2-pint bag suits a large teapot or a standard flask; a 4-pint bag suits an urn or a 2-litre pump flask. A 20-cup tea round takes two 4-pint bags (about 18 mugs) plus a top-up; a meeting of eight is covered by one 2-pint bag in a flask.

The limit is usually hot water, not tea: 20 mugs is 5 litres drawn in one go, which is a question for your boiler's tank size — our hot water boiler guide works through it.

Which tea bags for meeting rooms, reception and hotel bedrooms?

Where tea sits out on a tray rather than in a cupboard, buy individually wrapped bags. Enveloped prism bags come in packs of 200, each sealed in its own envelope, so a meeting-room or bedroom tray stays tidy and the tea keeps between refills. Tagged bags in packs of 100 are the middle option — string and tag for teapot service, no envelope. A tray wants a short range: breakfast tea, a decaf and one or two green or herbal options, all in the catering tea bag range.

How much decaf and herbal tea should an office stock?

There is no reliable average, so do what our office decaf guide does for decaf coffee: assume one drink in ten, then adjust. At 100 teas a week that is ten decaf or herbal cups, so a box of 100 decaf tagged bags and a small box of green or peppermint bags cover an office of 20 for around a quarter. Buy small first — the open box nobody drinks is the one that goes stale.

What about offices with a vending machine?

Vending machines handle tea in one of two ways. Models with a fresh-brew tea option brew loose leaf tea from a canister, so you buy tea by the kilo from the vending tea range. Models without a brewer usually offer a hot water selection for a tea bag beside the machine, so the one-cup arithmetic still applies. The hot drinks vending machine range shows which models brew fresh tea.

Office tea FAQs

How many cups does a 4-pint catering tea bag make?

About nine 250ml mugs, because 4 pints is roughly 2,272ml. A box of 82 bags brews around 740 mugs.

Should an office buy one-cup or two-cup tea bags?

One-cup bags for a kitchen where people make a mug at a time; two-cup bags only if the office brews in small teapots.

How long does a box of 1,100 tea bags last?

Divide 1,100 by your weekly tea count. At five teas per person per week, a 20-person office gets about 11 weeks from a box and a 50-person office about four.

How should tea bags be stored in an office?

In a cool, dry place away from strong aromas, as the packaging advises. Keep the bulk box sealed and decant a week or two of bags into the kitchen caddy.

Can a vending machine serve proper tea?

Yes — machines with a fresh-brew tea option brew loose leaf tea from a canister. Machines without one usually dispense hot water for a tea bag instead.