Break Room Dispatches: How BrewBird made this Pharmaceutical Company's Campus a Destination

Break Room Dispatches are a series of real stories from our customers and partners. Have a BrewBird story to share? Get in touch with us!

For more than twenty years, this leading pharmaceutical company's campus had the same food and beverage vendors. The coffee worked. Nobody complained. But nobody talked about it either. When the new facilities manager arrived, she saw an opportunity to make the office feel different. She wasn't looking for another coffee machine. She was looking for something employees would actually notice. Because if there's one thing people interact with every single day at work, it's coffee. The campus already had a café, bean-to-cup machines, and commercial pod brewers. Rather than replace the existing coffee offerings, she wanted to make it better.

"I wanted something that was easy for people to understand but still gave them choices," she told us. "You don't just want one type of coffee."

BrewBird offered six different coffees, including decaf, with the simplicity of a single button. Employees could explore coffees from different roasters without learning a complicated machine or waiting for someone to train them.

Before making the decision, she called peers at other companies already using BrewBird. "I definitely did my homework." Those conversations gave her confidence to start with two brewers. Within a year…Those two became ten, because employees kept choosing the coffee. 

The lines told the story before the data did

One of the most interesting things happened almost immediately. In break rooms with multiple coffee options, people naturally started lining up at the BrewBird. The machine next to it often sat empty. The usage reports simply confirmed what everyone could already see: Employees were choosing this coffee over other options on campus.

Those reports became valuable for much more than measuring BrewBird. They helped the facilities team understand what roast profiles people preferred, how demand  changed by building, and where additional machines would have the biggest impact.

Now, the workplace team could make decisions based on real behavior and data, rather than guessing.

Real excerpt of a consumption report

More than a vendor

Growing from two machines to ten wasn't as simple as delivering more brewers. In a large campus like this company’s, every building had different layouts, housing teams with different functions. Some spaces had plenty of counter space. Others had none. The BrewBird team worked alongside theirs to figure out where each brewer would live, even building custom cabinets where needed. The objective went beyond simply installing a coffee machine, and focused on making each coffee station feel intentional and special.

That partnership has continued well beyond design and installation, with responsive support, proactive service, and reporting whenever the facilities team needs it.

Why people call it a destination

We spend a lot of time talking about workplace experience. Sometimes that means designing beautiful offices. Sometimes it means adding new amenities. But often it's the smallest daily rituals that change how people feel about coming to work. A great cup of coffee is one of those rituals.

When employees know they'll get an exceptional cup every time, they walk a little further. They meet coworkers they weren't planning to see. Conversations happen. The break room stops being somewhere people pass through, and becomes somewhere they choose to go, which is exactly what happened here. 

The rollout expanded because every group saw something different to love: employees got incredible coffee, facilities got a program that was easy to manage, leadership got data that justified expanding it, and the teams that didn't have a BrewBird all started asking the same question: "When are we getting one?" 

That's when you know the break room has become a destination. Interested in that vision for your office? Reach our team at sales@brewbird.com.