Motivation – everyone’s cup of tea
27 11 2009 - 11:38:34 AM
And that’s just as true in the workplace. When it comes to offering employee benefits, the drinks vending machine is always a positive choice.
Recent research highlights the importance of keeping core benefits in place, even during challenging economic times, in order to keep employees motivated. Of 600 employees surveyed in Great Britain, 81% believe that tea and coffee are a standard provision in the workplace rather than an optional perk.
Drinks machines are the hub of every office. Research by the UK Tea Council shows that 80% of office workers say that they find out more about what's going on at work over a cup of tea than in any other way.
Gone are the days when you keyed in your choice of hot drink by pushing a button marked A1 or C2 and hoped that whatever came out would be drinkable. Today’s hot drinks vending machines serve tea made with a real teabag or ground coffee with the rich aroma of a full roast. It simply can’t be forgotten that there is nothing more gratifying than a refreshing coffee, tea or hot chocolate at regular intervals throughout the day.
There is a wide selection of drinks vending machines to choose from to meet the needs of each individual organisation – whether it’s an attractive worktop machine for visitors to use, or a more functional option for those out of hours areas. What is common though is that there is a need for choice – in machine and drinks range.
So, in these days of the credit crunch, the vending machine proves its popularity time and again. Even in a recession, people want higher quality coffee and tea, but they are reducing their number of visits to expensive high street coffee shops.
By providing the best on-site drinks vending and catering options, employers can keep their employees happy and motivated which, in turn, means they are more likely to go the extra mile for the company and produce top quality work.
Great tasting drinks are essentially an effective way of keeping employees and colleagues happy.
Vending is also a positive option for the environment. Vending machines only heat just enough water needed to make the drinks required. No energy or resources are wasted with overfilling kettles, throwing away un-used water and boiling water that is never used – all things that happen every day with the traditional kettle.
We’re all doing our bit now as individuals at home by recycling everything from paper through to food waste and making an effort to turn off lights and equipment when they are not in use. But when it comes to the workplace, we can often be lazy, thinking that others will look after it.
If employers review the energy efficiency of the equipment they select, they can help to reduce the energy use in the office at any time of day. Energy efficiency ratings should be clearly marked on all electrical appliances and it’s worth office managers taking a few moments to review these. A key element to check is standby mode. Many pieces of technology, right through to television sets, often default to standby mode when users think they have been switched off. In this status, large amounts of energy can continue to be used without anyone being aware. The same applies for vending machines.
Manufacturers of electrical appliances can provide organisations with a huge amount of support in terms of energy saving by factoring in energy efficiency within the very design of their machines.
Reducing energy bills not only saves money, but it also has a major impact on extending the life of our planet’s finite energy sources. And increasingly activities that help our environment are close to the hearts of individuals working within organisations. Knowing that they are helping towards a sustainable future is another strong motivational factor for many employees.
Ensuring that employees have direct access to a wide range of delicious hot drinks throughout the day, using equipment that incorporates both quality and efficient design, can make a huge difference to employees and therefore businesses. In challenging economic times, it makes both commercial and emotional sense to invest wisely in goods and services that motivate and incentivise employees. Even more reason to go full steam ahead with a comforting cup of tea!
Drink to health and success – the importance of hydration
28 09 2009 - 03:58:07 PM
By drinking six to eight glasses of water a day you can help your body function properly as well as staying in top condition.
Keeping hydrated is important for a number of reasons. During the working week it’s important to keep drinking water-based drinks as your concentration levels can decrease by 13% and short-term memory by 7% if you get dehydrated.
But you don’t only have to drink water to keep hydrated. Other drinks that are strong hydrators include:
- Water
- Herbal Tea (infusions)
- Fruit Juices
Tea and coffee are diuretics so can lead to dehydration if drunk instead of water. However, there is little harm for the average person in drinking one or two cups of tea or coffee a day for enjoyment.
In fact, research findings published by the British Nutrition Foundation suggest that three cups of tea a day can cut the risk of a heart attack. An additional benefit could also be increasing bone strength. Clinical studies have also shown that natural plant antioxidants found in tea – called polyphenols - have a number of beneficial effects on many biochemical processes in the body. So, moderation in all things could be the key to enjoying a range of drinks.
It’s essential to keep drinking fluids throughout the day as by the time you actually feel thirsty your body has probably already lost between two to five cups of water!
There is a simple test to see if you have enough water in your body. All you have to do is to pinch the back of your hand. If the skin takes some time to fall back into place when you let go of the pinch, you need a top up. Ideally, the pinched skin should quickly snap back into place once released.
Here are some top tips for keeping up your daily water intake:
- Start the day with a cup of hot water with a good squeeze of fresh lemon in it to give your digestive system a real boost.
- Ensure water is constantly available to you throughout the day.
- Create a schedule so you don’t forget! It can be as simple as having one drink with each meal or putting reminders on your phone / computer.
- Select a cup of water as well as your cup of tea or coffee.
- Drink a glass of water before and during each meal.
There are lots of benefits to keeping hydrated too. Drinking water helps to reduce your appetite and is calorie free so it can help you if you’re trying to lose weight. Often a small feeling of hunger can actually be thirst and having a glass of water can stop those hunger pangs.
Keeping water close by can be difficult, but as more people have become aware of the importance of drinking up to two litres a day, many have started buying bottled water. The downside to this is the environmental impact as large amounts of resources are used to extract, package and transport bottled water. However, through ever improving plastic recycling facilities, both waste and energy consumption can be reduced. And this seems to be continuing to improve, as in 2007 35% of plastic bottles were recycled – a 68% increase on the previous year.
An alternative solution to help reduce the environmental impact of keeping up your water consumption is to use water dispensers or vending machines for your daily dose. Drinks vending machines can be found within most offices as well as public places. Cups can then be used again and then recycled in an environmentally friendly way.
And don’t worry about drinking too much in a day. The kidneys of a healthy adult can process fifteen litres of water every day!
Being energy efficient to save money
16 07 2009 - 04:33:41 PM
Recent research by Inenco has shown that consumers and businesses are cutting back on electricity usage. Demand for electricity is down by an average of 4% compared to 2008. This is partly caused by the current economic climate, but it is also a result of consumers trying to cut energy bills by using fewer electrical items.
It is sensible to reduce costs by turning off lights when not in a room or electrical equipment that is not required, but sometimes that’s not possible in a busy office environment. In business, equipment often needs to be available throughout the day and into the evening, from photocopiers through to the office coffee machine.
When selecting or reviewing office equipment such as drinks vending machines, it is important to check the energy efficiency rating of the machine - including the energy used in standby mode. Not only does this help to reduce energy bills, but also helps in the fight against climate change.
‘Climate change’ is a term that is now widely used by people around the world and is a topic that is often covered by the media. Some climate change is actually a natural occurrence and the earth has been gradually heating up since the Ice Age over 15,000 years ago.
A large contributing factor to the earth’s surface temperature is the ‘greenhouse effect’. Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane are gases that form a type of protective blanket around the earth, creating this greenhouse effect by stopping heat from escaping. This is a natural process which for many thousands of years has kept the earth’s temperature at a fairly constant temperature of +15°C rather than the -18°C it would be without it.
So why is climate change and energy efficiency now a concern for us all? Well, up until the industrial revolution about 200 years ago, temperature changes occurred very slowly over long periods of time, allowing for nature to adapt to the new environment.
In more recent years, man-made gases have sped up the rate of emissions impacting the temperature of the earth’s surface much more quickly without giving animal and floral species time to adapt. In August 2003 the UK saw the highest temperatures on record.
So how can we combat climate change?
Over 40% of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions, the main greenhouse gas to cause climate change, is created by everyday energy use. Simple things such as leaving lights on or overfilling the kettle with water to make a hot drink, not only waste energy but result in needless carbon dioxide emissions.
We can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions we produce quite easily by using energy efficient products. All electrical goods should carry information about their energy efficiency. In the drinks vending machine sector, independent testing can be done using the European Vending Association Energy Measurement Test protocol (version 2). This allows potential buyers the chance to assess what drinks vending equipment provides the most cost-effective solution in terms of energy consumption.
As the majority of companies have corporate sustainability goals in place, taking energy efficiency into account when looking at vending solutions can support these goals. Key corporate and social responsibility (CSR) areas of focus include:
- Energy use reduction
- Recycling
- Carbon footprint measurement
- Water use reduction
- Sustainable raw materials.
When considering buying a new hot drinks machine, whether a company has CSR goals in place or not, it is important to note when carbon dioxide emissions are produced in the machine’s lifecycle. The majority of carbon dioxide emissions occur during the ‘use’ stage – almost ten times as much as during the manufacture stage of the drink machine itself.
Ways that hot drinks vending products can reduce energy use through their design include:
- Only heating enough water for a few hot drinks at a time
- Having an energy efficient power saving / standby mode.
In terms of daily tasks such as making a hot drink of tea or coffee, machine design can have a dramatic impact on both energy bills as well as the environment.
To find out more about energy efficient hot drinks machines, visit the Mars Drinks website.
Tea – an interesting history
01 06 2009 - 05:55:25 PM
Countries like China and Japan have a long history of tea drinking, in fact, with tea bushes native to China, tea has been a staple there since the fifth century.
The history of tea drinking in the UK starts somewhat later - in the seventeenth century, when tea, coffee and chocolate were exotic new commodities. The first reports of tea drinking in Europe come from missionaries and traders who had penetrated into China in the sixteenth century. In 1559 Ramusio, a Venetian traveller described it as having medicinal properties, good for headaches, stomach ache and pains in the joints.
Tea may have first arrived in Britain at the very beginning of the 1600’s with the increase of imports from Holland, with the Dutch East India Company setting up relationships with China, ahead of its English rival.
From the very beginning of its British history, tea was a high class drink; taken in the houses of the aristocracy from fine china cups and the best tea services. It was popularised by Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II and was quickly adopted by her courtiers. Even Samuel Pepys notes in his famous diary: “I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before.”
By the end of the seventeenth century, the popularity of tea had reached the coffee houses. It became popular with the middle classes, as much for its taste and health giving properties as a statement of revolt against the extravagancies and immoralities of the aristocracy and the court.
Thus tea was instrumental in shaping a more civilised Europe in the 1600’s with better dietary habits, table manners and social rituals. By 1700 tea imports had reached a sizable 90,000 lb a year and the tea trade was here to stay.
In 1784, Prime Minister William Pitt recognised the need to slash tax on tea imports – tea drinking had permeated through to the lower as well as middle classes and provided a healthy and more readily available alternative to malt liquor. By 1791, the East India Company was importing 15,000,000 lbs of tea into Britain.
Tea taxes continued to play an important role in consumption and the raising of taxes for war chests in the first half of the nineteenth century had a deep impact on the tea import industry. After 1866 there is a re-growth in the industry with prices lowered and tea viewed more as a necessity than a luxury. It is at this point that Britain starts to import leaves not only from China but also India and Ceylon.
The importance of tea as ‘the National drink” is highlighted in Britain during and after the First World War, with food and drink prices rising, the government went to the unusual step of capping the price – recognising its consumption as an essential.
In between World wars, there was a large scale price war between producing countries which resulted in the International Tea Agreement in 1933, which reduced production to 85% of highest output of the proceeding three years.
The Second World War had a much higher impact on tea producing countries and also on the ability of Britain to import food and drink. This resulted in a rationing that lasted well after the war ended and resulted in a reduction in the consumption of tea into the 1950s. In the 1960s, the drinks market became saturated with coffee, soft drinks and wine drinks taking over a large share of the market; tea went into a 30 year decline.
This trend has now been reversed and in the 21st century we are seeing the consumption of tea gaining momentum see Tea Prices Rise as Demand Exceeds Supplies. Whether this is down to taste, variety or the healthy benefits is not clear but we do know that for the British, nothing beats a cup of tea.
To find more about the different types of tea available take a look at the FLAVIA® tea page.
Tea price rises as tea demand exceeds supply
15 04 2009 - 03:48:13 PM
The price of a cup of tea is likely to get more expensive. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics show the price of tea has already increased by 2.5% in February this year. Poor tea crops as well as the falling value of the pound are to blame for the rising prices.
Tea consumption reached 3.85m tonnes last year, 4.8% higher than 2007. However, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), droughts hitting Kenya, Sri Lanka and India, which account for half of the world’s tea exports, are creating a shortfall in production.
The Tea Board of Kenya estimates Kenya, Africa’s largest grower of tea, will produce 328 million kg of tea crop this year, which is well below the 345 million kg produced last year. Traders are concerned the tea production gap will get larger causing prices to sky rocket.
The UK, as the second-biggest importer of tea in the world will either have to absorb the higher cost of the raw materials or pass them on to consumers. Factoring in food inflation, which is higher in Britain than anywhere else in Europe, the price of milk and sugar will make the increased price of a cup of tea even worse.
With demand growing, we’ll continue to work with the most popular brands and experienced tea traders around the world to bring you the finest tasting tea selection available for you to enjoy during your working day.
Click here to find out more about tea (http://www.tea.co.uk/ or http://myflavia.co.uk/drinks/tea/).
