By Miles Schwartz, Founder of Bare Brew. Disclosure: we sell one of the options below, in cans. Its prices are our public store prices, shipping included in the math — the same standard we apply to everyone else's numbers.
If you are pricing cold brew for a team, every quote you will find hides a different cost. Keg services quote per cup and bill the install separately. Coffee services quote per employee and mean drip. Café math never happens until someone expenses it. Here is all four formats on one set of books, with every outside figure re-checked on October 27, 2026 and its source named.
The four formats, priced honestly
| Format | Published price basis | What one serving really costs | Caffeine per serving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keg on tap (local service) | $1.75 per 8 oz cup; one keg replaces 83 single-use cups — Perpetual Beverages' published San Diego figures | ~$1.75 per 8 oz cup, plus kegerator, gas, install and line cleaning. Their own pricing page quotes $2–$3 for most 12 oz pours | Not published by the provider — varies by roaster and keg |
| Managed office coffee service | $60–$120 per employee per year (KompareIt, last updated February 2023); $4.85–$10.08 per employee per month (Kwote Advisor, updated August 2026) | $0.50–$1.50 per cup — Kwote Advisor's blended average, not split out by drip vs pod | ~95 mg per 8 fl oz, the USDA reference value for brewed coffee — a different drink |
| Café runs | $5.72 median US cold brew price, September 2026 (Toast restaurant payments data); $4.50–$6.00 interquartile range (Joe Coffee, Q2 2026) | ~$5.72, plus the walk | Varies by shop; no published figure |
| Canned cold brew, delivered (Bare Brew) | 12-pack $53.99 + $8.99 flat shipping, every order, no minimum | $4.69–$5.25 per can delivered (table below) | 320 mg per 12 fl oz can, printed on the label |
The keg wins on raw per-cup price and it is not close — if your team drinks a lot of cold brew every single day, a keg is hard to beat on cost alone. What the per-cup figure does not carry: the equipment, the service visits, a keg that goes stale if a hybrid team is out for a week, and no printed dose per cup. The managed-service figures are cheaper still, but they buy drip and pods, not cold brew. The honest comparison for cans is the café run — the thing your team is already doing.
The delivered-cost table nobody publishes
Can prices online exclude shipping. Ours is a flat $8.99 per order with no minimum and no free-shipping threshold, so the true per-can cost depends on how many cases you order at once. This is our own store math, run on our published prices (12-pack $53.99; 4-pack $23.99; 6-pack $32.99):
| Order | Product | Shipping | Total | True cost per can | Cost per 100 mg caffeine |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 × 12-pack | $53.99 | $8.99 | $62.98 | $5.25 | $1.64 |
| 2 × 12-pack | $107.98 | $8.99 | $116.97 | $4.87 | $1.52 |
| 4 × 12-pack | $215.96 | $8.99 | $224.95 | $4.69 | $1.46 |
For reference, the keg's $1.75 buys an 8 oz cup of unpublished strength, and a median $5.72 café cold brew buys whatever that shop pours. The can is the only row where the dose is on the label before you pay.
No sugar. No dairy. Bare ingredients. Special blend of coffee and water — filtered water and 100% Honduran Arabica coffee, two ingredients, 320 mg of natural caffeine, 20 calories and 5 g total carbohydrate per 12 fl oz can.
Sizing it: what a team actually goes through
Assumptions, stated so you can re-run them: a drinking month is 4.33 weeks; each drinker takes cans at the rate shown; one monthly order of 12-packs at $53.99 plus one $8.99 shipping charge; subscriber pricing, if you use it, lowers the product line further.
| Team | Habit | Cans / month | Cases / month | Monthly cost | Per person / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 people | 3 cans a week | ~65 | 6 | $332.93 | ~$66.59 |
| 10 people | 3 cans a week | ~130 | 11 | $602.88 | ~$60.29 |
| 10 people | 1 can a workday | ~217 | 19 | $1,034.80 | ~$103.48 |
| 25 people | 3 cans a week | ~325 | 28 | $1,520.71 | ~$60.83 |
Against the café baseline — three cold brews a week at the $5.72 September 2026 median is about $74 per person per month, before the time out of the office — the canned fridge runs cheaper per person and nobody leaves the building. Against drip service it costs more per head, because it is a different product: a sealed, full-strength cold brew instead of a pot.
Why cans fit offices that kegs and pots do not
- No equipment, no contract. No kegerator install, no line cleaning, no service agreement. Cases arrive, cans go in the fridge or a cupboard.
- Shelf-stable. Our cans store at room temperature until you chill them, so a hybrid team's stock does not spoil across a quiet week — the failure mode of a tapped keg.
- Portioned by the can. One can is one serving with the caffeine printed on it. No half-pots thrown out, no guessing what a cup from the keg contained. If you want the full comparison of how that 320 mg lands against drip, espresso and café cold brew, we normalized all of it in our guide to how much caffeine is in cold brew coffee.
- Works for one office or five. The same flat $8.99 shipping applies per order whether the case goes to headquarters or a satellite team of three.
The bottom line
- Cheapest per cup, team on-site daily: a keg service — budget the equipment and service on top of the per-cup rate.
- Cheapest per head, any coffee will do: a managed drip/pod service at $60–$120 per employee per year.
- Cold brew specifically, no equipment, no contract, dose printed on every serving: cans, at $4.69–$5.25 per can delivered on the math above — and cheaper than the café runs they replace.
Buying for one person instead of a team? The same delivered-cost math, applied to gifting, is in our coffee subscription gift guide. Or see how our own subscription prices out.
Bare Brew is a Newsweek Readers' Choice 2026 finalist. Stock the office at drinkbarebrew.com — 40+ retail placements across four states, 15 of them confirmed stocking in Michigan and Florida as of October 2026.
Sources re-checked October 27, 2026. Bare Brew prices and the $8.99 flat shipping rate are from our own live store and subscription pages. Keg figures ($1.75 per 8 oz cup, one keg replacing 83 single-use cups, $2–$3 per 12 oz pour) are Perpetual Beverages' published figures for its San Diego service; local keg pricing varies by market. The $60–$120 per employee per year range is KompareIt's office coffee delivery cost page, last updated February 2023. The $4.85–$10.08 per employee per month and $0.50–$1.50 per cup figures are Kwote Advisor's 2026 coffee service pricing guide, updated August 13, 2026. Café cold brew pricing is Toast's September 2026 median of $5.72 and Joe Coffee's Q2 2026 interquartile range of $4.50–$6.00. The ~95 mg per 8 fl oz brewed-coffee figure is derived from USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy entry 171890 (40 mg caffeine per 100 g) at USDA's own 237 g serving weight. Re-run the sizing table with your own headcount and habit — the assumptions are printed above it.
