April 8th, 2019 by Chris Chapman

Forget diesel and petrol – this country is fuelled by tea and coffee! That’s why every workplace needs a steady supply of hot drinks to serve to staff. It keeps morale and motivation high which means your staff will be a lot more productive! A catering urn is the best way to go about this – here are five reasons why!

It Saves Time

As we mentioned above, providing tea and coffee to your staff helps keep them motivated and more productive. However, this boost in productivity can be balanced out by the amount of time your staff spend waiting for the kettle to boil! A catering urn keeps water at near-boiling all day long, so your staff don’t have to wait whenever they want to make a brew. Bear in mind that your urn will take a bit more time than a kettle to heat up initially. It’s always a good idea to fully fill your urn up first thing in the morning so it has lots of time to heat up. Depending on the size of the urn, it can take between half an hour to an hour to get water to near-boiling.

It Saves Money

It takes a lot of energy to boil cold water. If you’re boiling it from cold constantly throughout the day, this will add up on your electricity bill! It’s much more energy-efficient to heat up a large quantity of cold water once and keep it warm throughout the day. This is how a catering urn works – you fill it up once, let it heat up to your set temperature, and you’ve got hot water until the urn is empty! Of course, when your catering urn runs out, you’ll need to fill it up with cold water and let it heat up again, which can take a little time. It’s important to make sure you get one that’s big enough for all your staff so you don’t have to refill it more than one or two times a day. Bigger urns do cost a little more, but you’ll more than make all of that money back in energy savings over time!

It Reduces Queues

If your workplace has ten or more staff in it, you might find things get a bit hectic around lunchtime! With a kettle, your kitchen area will quickly get jammed up with heavy traffic as your staff all gather around to wait for their turn. Unless you’ve got a big kitchen, this can be a bit of a problem! With a catering urn, your staff can be in and out in a flash so they can enjoy the rest of their break in peace, reducing traffic jams in your kitchen and helping your staff stay more productive.

You Can Use It for Anything

Coffee machines are good for making coffee – no surprise there! However, if you want a drinks machine that can also make tea, you can expect to pay a premium for it. Catering urns give you the freedom to make coffee and tea for a fraction of the cost, as well as cup-a-soups, instant noodles, couscous, and more – and they can even give you instant hot water for washing up, too! Some coffee machines will let you dispense hot water, but these tend to be very expensive when compared to a catering urn.

They’re Safer

As you don’t have to fill up your catering urn as often as a kettle, there’s a lot less to go wrong! The main thing is that this will massively reduce the risk of spillages. As urns are much bigger and heavier, they’re also much less likely to be knocked over. Some catering urns, like the MYLEK Xpresso, also come with additional safety features like dry boil protection, which will prevent you from accidentally turning the urn on when it’s empty. Other safety features to look out for in a catering urn are cool-touch lids, precise temperature displays (the Xpresso uses a digital thermostat so you can set the temperature very precisely), and tip-over protection.