As a rapidly growing tech company we have a number of ways that we measure our progress – there’s the typical revenue, profit and customer numbers but today I identified a new one – coffee consumption.

Towards the end of 2009 I finally got fed up with the inability of anyone in our office to make a decent cup of coffee – or to be more precise, to make me a decent cup of coffee (even after many, many hints). So, I took the lazy option and ordered a Nespresso machine to sit alongside our drinks fridge and fruit bowl.

I had my doubts about capsule based coffee machines, I’m now a convert. They’re quick, mess-free and now that Nespresso collect the old capsules for recycling my major issue with them has been resolved. Most importantly they give a superb coffee every time.

The major downside is that you have to order the capsules for delivery, so you need to plan ahead a little. It does make it easy to keep track of consumption though. Back in September this wasn’t too much trouble. The coffee drinkers in the office numbered precisely 2 (I don’t count those who like instant ‘coffee’ – but that’s a whole separate issue). Over the last few months though our numbers have grown and the aroma of fresh coffee has caused a few tea drinkers to swap sides and diverted many of our development team from their favoured caffeine source (diet coke).

Our first 100 capsules lasted 2 months, the next 100 lasted 6 weeks, then 4 weeks, then 3. Our latest order arrived today, I decided to bulk up – 400 capsules. As we’re adding another 3 members to the team this month I suspect these won’t last long!

In case you’re wondering, the red boxes are decaf – no-one will touch them. Unless we’ve run out of everything else like we did at the start of the week.