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Our Office Coffee Cart

Home Tour: ABM Studio
By Laura Gummerman

How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com OK, OK, I know that there is a wide variety of categories when it comes to people and their coffee. Some people are casual, every-so-often coffee drinkers. Others are pretty intense about their coffee. Like, really intense. Like don’t-talk-to-me-actually-on-second-thought-don’t-even-look-at-me-until-I’ve-had-my-coffee intense. Some people are coffee aficionados and can actually pick out the subtle notes of vanilla, or blueberry, or bacon, or whatever other crazy thing is supposed to be in their primo cup of joe. Others, however, feel their irish cream hazelnut chocolate explosion java just isn’t flavored enough (guilty on that one). The team members here at the ABM studio fall throughout all these categories, so when I started out to set up our studio coffee cart, I wanted to have a little bit of something for everyone’s taste. Here’s a rundown of how we built our office coffee cart:

How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com Buying the coffee: Since we are catering to some pretty different coffee tastes, it’s a good idea to keep several different kinds on hand. We love many of the PT’s Coffee options, but we also throw in a few flavored coffees (like caramel macchiato or hazelnut flavored) as well. Of course, it’s helpful to have a small coffee bean grinder for coffee that isn’t already ground. Depending on the type of coffee maker we are using, we decide if we need it ground finer than usual (like for pour-over coffee or espresso), so make sure to keep that in mind when buying a grinder. However, when we are buying our bag of coffee from a coffee shop, they’ll grind it however we need. (Thanks, Coffee Ethic!)

How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com Making the coffee: It’s fun to have a few different ways on hand that coffee can be made. Our new photographer Sarah actually used to be a barista for a couple coffee shops in Nashville a while back, so we like to make her brew the coffee whenever we can. We have a standard coffee pot so we can make several quick cups at once for everyone, but we also have a Chemex for pour-over coffee and a french press as well. My favorite way to have coffee comes from the espresso machine where we can make lattes (we girls at the studio are pretty big on lattes). I’m hoping Sarah will drive our latte quality through the roof in the next few months. I also added some glass containers to keep the different coffee filters contained and organized.

How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com Drinking the coffee: Of course coffee mugs are a pretty essential part of drinking coffee (duh!), so we had to have a few on the cart for easy access. We have a mixture of pretty white mugs and personal novelty mugs floating around the office (everyone knows that the cat-themed mug is mine). Since most on the team don’t like their coffee black, we stock our cart with plenty of fun additions for the coffee. We have sugar shakers filled with both sugar and stevia to sweeten the drinks, but we also have a few coffee syrups as well. While you can buy lots of different flavors of syrups, they are also really easy to make! I made vanilla, almond, stevia, and hazelnut flavors for our cart. We of course have a creamer option on hand that week in the fridge nearby (we have an adorable Smeg next to our coffee cart to keep our creamer cold).  And we can’t forget the coffee stirrers!

How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com How To Stock Your Own Coffee Cart abeautifulmess.com We also keep some tea on the cart for tea drinkers. I know I don’t always feel like coffee every day, so it’s nice to have the tea option as well. As you might already know, Elsie is a huge tea fan. From time to time we also add a few snacks that go well with coffee like biscotti or shortbread cookies—yum! So far everyone has really been enjoying the different features of our studio cart. What kind of coffee supplies do you keep on hand? xo. Laura

Credits // Author: Laura Gummerman, Photography: Sarah Rhodes, Photos edited using Imogen from the Folk Collection.

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