Office Pantry Budget Template for Bangalore Companies

A pantry budget that is a single monthly figure cannot be defended, forecast or improved. Broken into its parts it becomes all three, and the parts are more predictable than the total.

Monthly pantry cost — by team size (Bangalore reference)

• 10 people: ₹5,000-₹10,000/month
• 50 people: ₹25,000-₹50,000/month
• 100 people: ₹50,000-₹1,00,000/month
• 250 people: ₹1.2-₹2.5 lakh/month
• 500+ people: ₹2.5-₹5 lakh/month

Split by category

• Beverages (tea, coffee, juice, water): 40-45%
• Snacks (biscuits, chips, chocolates): 25-30%
• Fresh fruits + dairy: 10-15%
• Disposables (cups, tissues, napkins): 8-10%
• Sugar, salt, condiments: 5%

Hidden costs most budgets miss

• AMC on coffee vending + water dispenser: ₹2,000-₹5,000/month
• Emergency refills (3-5 per month): ₹500-₹2,000
• Festival / celebration stocks (Diwali, year-end): ₹5,000-₹20,000 in peak months

Benchmark: ₹500-₹1,000/employee/month

That's the Bangalore standard for a well-stocked pantry. If you're paying significantly less, your pantry is probably under-stocked. If much more, you have leakage — expired stock, over-ordering, or vendor markup.

The lines a usable budget has

• Beverages — tea, coffee, milk, sugar. The most stable line and the one that tracks attendance most closely.
• Snacks. The most variable, and the one most affected by whether provision is free or paid.
• Water, either cans or filtration service including filter replacement.
• Disposables — cups, stirrers, tissues, bin liners. Consistently underestimated because no single purchase feels significant.
• Equipment — rental, AMC and consumables like descaler.
• Housekeeping consumables for the pantry area specifically, which otherwise get lost in a facilities line.

Forecast on attendance, review on actuals

Build the forecast per head per working day and multiply by expected attendance rather than headcount — that single change removes most of the systematic overshoot in hybrid offices. Then review against actuals monthly. Two or three cycles is enough to produce a figure you can plan with, and to make any change in supplier or policy visible immediately rather than arguable.

Separate one-time from recurring

Equipment purchases, fit-out and initial stocking are one-time and distort a monthly average badly if they sit in the same line. Keeping them apart is what lets you answer the two different questions finance will ask: what does this cost us to run, and what did it cost us to set up.