The Best Office Perk Ever…

There are so many office perks to consider – coffee, healthy food, unhealthy food, gyms, nap rooms, yoga rooms, meditation, walking clubs, standing desks, ergonomic seats, health checks, vaccinations, fun runs, pub runs, paternity leave, extra maternity leave, study leave, nursing rooms, prayer rooms, office pets, BYO pets, flexible hours, day care, travel funding, midday surfing, midday lawn bowls, paid study, mental health support, icecream, libraries, yoga, massages, massage chairs, personal development, mentoring, lunch and learns, paid memberships, give back volunteering days, matched donations, charity events, casual dress, office art, games room, retreats, snow days, beach days, inventing days, unlimited paid days off, free parking, birthday celebrations, awards, and the list keeps on going …

But what is the best office perk? Free draught beverages of course! We all need to drink, no not just beer. Many offices put on taps of water, soda water, seltzer, cider and even kombucha. Kombucha comes in a bunch of flavours and is a versitile choice, i.e. Mon-Thur the team can be healthy and then come Friday spice things up by turning a Mojito kombucha into a cocktail.

What makes a good office perk and why is free beverages on tap the best

Connect: a good office perk needs to bring the people together, ideally in a professional and personal level. Many perks will do this but it’s hard to beat the excitement of a office bar.
Collaborate: great teams work together to solve problems, think of the water tower conversations where some of the best business breakthroughs happen, now think of what happens when it’s not just water being dispensed!
Creativity: Creativity is intelligence having fun and it’s no co-incidence that beer rhymes with cheer.
Culture: People create the culture not the things around the office however, a bar is certainly a good catalyst, a place for the team to collaborate, share, support, speak up, celebrate and ultimately build trust.
Attendance: We live in a crazy time and it’s sometimes hard to get the team jazzed to attend the office but nothing gets them running in like the promise of world class beers on tap!
Waste Free: If your business is committed to a net zero target then kegs are definitely trump bottles and cans. 40% of a beer’s footprint is made up from the packaging alone but along with avoiding the waste you avoid needing to sort out empties.
Easy: The best perks are easy, easy to make happen and easy in that they generate the benefits without a key person having to drive things. Along with avoiding the need for a team member to do bottle shop runs the beauty of a bar is if you build it, they will come.

How to make it happen...

Step 1 – Get Dispending Gear: The easiest approach is to install a self contained kegerator but some offices go all out and build a fridge, chilling machine and taps into their bar/kitchen bench. The other idea is to just use a counter top chilling machine that sits on top of the counter and chills the beverage as it’s being poured, perfect if you’ve got bugger all space. Besides the gear to dispense the kegs you also need something to pour into, you can ask everyone to bring in their own glass, get some branded with the business logo or just use an old boot.
Step 2 – Get Kegs: if KegSwappa is in the hood then it’ll likely be the cheapest, easiest approach to sourcing kegs otherwise, you’ll need to call your local brewery or see if your local pub will supply them.
Step 3 – Maintain: Draught setups do need maintenance, at the very least a line clean every month or if switching up the brew type in a drastic way (e.g. a stout to a lager) then you want to clean the lines to avoid any mixed flavours. Cleaning lines is easy and quick but if you want the hands off approach get KegSwappa or your local beer plumber in to help out.

Summary...

It’s true, we are a little biased when it comes to office perks but it doesn’t change the fact that free beverages on tap for your team ticks a bucket load of benefits and is arguably the best bang for buck perk in the world. End of the day the best perks create life in the business and as Mahatma Gandhi said “where there is beer there is life”…