Bangalore Office Pantry — Actual Cost Breakdown for 100-Person Office

Pantry cost per head is the number every admin team is asked for and almost nobody can produce with confidence, because the spend is scattered across several vendors and rarely tracked as one line.

Monthly spend reference — 100-person office, 22 working days, Bangalore

• Tea + coffee (premix, 7-8 kg each): ₹5,500
• Sugar + creamer: ₹1,800
• Water cans (20L, ~18 cans/day): ₹48,000
• Biscuits (assorted, 5 kg/month): ₹2,800
• Snack packets (assorted): ₹8,500
• Fresh fruits (daily delivery): ₹9,000
• Soft drinks + juices (fridge stock): ₹6,500
• Chocolate + confectionery: ₹3,500
• Disposables (cups, napkins, stirrers): ₹4,000
• Milk (daily for tea/coffee, ~50L/month): ₹3,500
• Cleaning supplies (dishwash, hand soap): ₹2,500
• AMC (coffee machine): ₹1,200
• Total: ~₹96,800/month

Seasonal variance

• Summer: +15% on water, cold drinks, juices
• Monsoon: +10% on tea, hot soups
• Festive months (Oct-Dec): +30% with Diwali + year-end stocking

Count the whole cost, not the grocery bill

Most pantry budgets undercount because they track consumables and ignore everything around them: disposables, water, equipment rental and AMC, and the admin hours spent chasing vendors and reconciling invoices. That last one is invisible in the ledger and is often the largest single item once you price the time honestly. A cost-per-head figure that excludes it is not comparable to anyone else’s.

Where the variance actually comes from

• Attendance, not headcount. A hybrid office with 40 per cent attendance does not consume like a full one, and budgets built on headcount overshoot every month.
• Whether beverages are free-vend or paid, which changes consumption more than any other single policy.
• Whether you are buying at retail pack sizes or bulk, which is usually the biggest unit-price gap.
• Wastage, which is real and rarely measured — anything perishable has a spoilage rate whether or not you track it.

Track it monthly or the number is fiction

A pantry cost per head calculated once is out of date within a quarter, because attendance patterns and prices both move. Recording it monthly against actual attendance turns it into something you can forecast and defend, and it makes the effect of any change — a supplier switch, a policy change, a new machine — visible within one cycle instead of arguable forever.