Figure out exactly how much coffee, donuts, and muffins to order for your meeting
💡 Why This Matters Office coffee runs happen often enough that guessing wrong gets expensive fast — too little coffee stalls a meeting, too many donuts is a wasted catering budget every single week. Enter your headcount and this works out exactly how much to order.
🥐 Planning something bigger than a coffee run? Check the Brunch Calculator →
Dunkin' sells over 2 billion cups of coffee a year in the US alone — and National Donut Day, the first Friday in June, was actually started in 1938 to honor women who served donuts to soldiers in World War I.
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This calculator scales standard office-catering ratios per person. Coffee is estimated at 1.5 cups per person, converted into standard coffee urns (96 oz, roughly 12 cups each) so you know how many to order or brew. Donuts and muffins together total 1.5 per person, split according to your chosen mix ratio — 60/40, 50/50, all-donuts, or all-muffins. Creamer (single-serve containers) and sugar packets are estimated at 2 each per person, and napkins at 2 per person to cover both the pastry and the coffee.
The coffee total converts into whole urns so you know exactly how many to order from a catering service or coffee shop — round up rather than down, since a group running low on coffee mid-meeting is a bigger problem than a half-empty urn. Donut and muffin counts round up to the nearest dozen, since most bakeries and grocery stores sell by the dozen or half-dozen.
This assumes a typical morning meeting or event where most attendees drink coffee — if you know a chunk of your group prefers tea or doesn't drink coffee at all, scale the coffee total down and consider adding a tea option instead. It also doesn't account for dietary restrictions; if you expect gluten-free or vegan attendees, budget a few extra items in those categories on top of the base count.
Order or brew coffee about 15-20 minutes before the meeting starts so it's hot but not sitting too long. If ordering from a bakery, call ahead for early-morning pickup times since donut shops often sell out of popular flavors fast. Set out cream, sugar, and napkins before people start arriving so the coffee station doesn't become a bottleneck once the meeting kicks off.
Example: Say you're ordering for 20 people with a 60/40 donut-muffin mix. Coffee: 20 × 1.5 = 30 cups (≈3 urns). Pastries: 20 × 1.5 = 30 total — 18 donuts (≈1.5 dozen) and 12 muffins (≈1 dozen). Creamer: 20 × 2 = 40 single-serve containers. Sugar: 20 × 2 = 40 packets. Napkins: 20 × 2 = 40 napkins.
Plan on 1.5 donuts per person for a morning meeting or office event — enough for people to have one plus a partial second without heavy leftovers.
Plan on about 1.5 cups of coffee per person for a morning event, which for 20 people works out to roughly 30 cups, or about 2 standard 96 oz coffee urns.
Offering a mix tends to satisfy more preferences than one or the other alone — a 60/40 or 50/50 split between donuts and muffins covers both sweet-tooth and slightly-more-breakfast-y preferences.
Budget 2 single-serve creamer containers and 2 sugar packets per person who drinks coffee, though it's worth having extra on hand since usage varies a lot person to person.