Build the Perfect Office Pantry: What to Buy and How to Organize It

From sweet treats to savory snacks, munching while you work just might be the secret sauce to a thriving in-office experience. It’s been shown to boost productivity and make you happier. So if you want to make your workplace a space employees enjoy coming to, building an office pantry with their favorite snacks is a great place to start.

In this post, we’ll share what we’ve learned as a leading office pantry items supplier, including what to buy for your office pantry, how to organize it, and what it can do for employee engagement.
What Should You Put in Your Office Pantry?
In 2023, Crafty clients’ pantry spend increased by 84%. Here's how these offices allocated their budget, on average: 

PANTRY BREAKDOWN

Now that you have an idea of what percentage of each category to stock, let’s look at Crafty’s top-selling office pantry items for snack inspiration.

First thing’s first, you need to know your budget. Whether you control the purse strings or you have a set amount assigned to you by your finance team, understanding how much you have for office food and beverages is crucial.Without this awareness, you risk overspending, shortages, and more.

Snacks

Produce

1. Bananas
   Based on Crafty’s consumption data, bananas were the top office snack in 2023. They’re sweet, packed with potassium, and come individually packaged by nature, thanks to their convenient peels. 
2. Apples
3. Grapes
4. Oranges
5. Baby carrots
6. Clementines

Pro tip: If any of the fruits or veggies are about to spoil, try slicing them up and plating them on the kitchen counter, or put them in a bowl on a central table. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your team will snatch snacks up if they’re made easy to eat and highly visible!

Bars

1. RXBAR Chocolate Sea Salt
2. Verb Energy Caffeinated Snack Bar, Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
3. IQ BAR Almond Butter Ch

Chips & Crackers

1. Cheez-It Crackers
2. SunChips
3. Stacy's Pita Chips

Sweets

1. Peanut M&Ms 
2. Pepperidge Farms Milano Cookies, Dark Chocolate 
3. Welch's Fruit Snacks

Beverages

Coffee & Tea

1. Big Shoulders Colombia House Drip
2. Philz Coffee Luca's Unplugged Decaf
3. Intelligentsia Black Cat Classic Espresso
4. La Colombe Triple Draft Latte
5. Rishi Tea Jasmine Green Tea
6. Pure Leaf Unsweetened Black Tea

Dairy and Plant-Based Milk

1. Prairie Farms Whole Milk
2. Oatly Oat Milk
3. Silk Almondmilk
4. Silk Soymilk

Alcohol

1. Topo Chico Hard Seltzer Variety Pack
2. Lagunitas DayTime
3. Vander Mill Hard Apple Cider

Supplies

1. Paper towels
2. Compostable plates
3. Renewable plant starch cutlery 
4. Sanitizing wipes

How to Find Diverse Snacks That Meet Various Dietary Preferences

Finding a diverse range of options so you can accommodate the dietary preferences of your team—whether they need vegan, kosher, or gluten-free food—can be a challenge. Crafty makes it easy. Simply visit the marketplace on our online platform and filter by dozens of product characteristics. 

Here’s a sampling of the diverse snacks we offer:

1. Hint Pineapple Flavored Water: Women-owned
2. Barnana Organic Ribbed Plantain Chips - Acapulco Lime: Latinx-owned
3. Coco5 Coconut Water: Black-owned
4. MadeGood Foods Vanilla Crispy Squares: Middle Eastern-owned
5. ITO EN Oi Ocha - Unsweetened Green Tea: AAPI-owned

How Do You Organize an Office Pantry?

Pick an Ideal Location

Choose a spot that is centrally located, but make sure it’s not a place where people will be in the way of foot traffic if they choose to gather. The perfect pantry location might be in your office kitchen, the breakroom, or even a corner of the office. 

If you’re struggling to figure out your perfect pantry layout, Crafty can help. We partner with Matterport to create 3D imaging of your entire office and craft the ideal pantry setup for you without even stepping foot in your space. Then, you’ll get to review it before we build it for you.

Choose the Right Containers

When selecting storage containers, clear containers with airtight lids are the best for ensuring freshness and visibility. For larger quantities of food, bulk dispensers are fantastic for keeping loose items like cereals and nuts fresh while ensuring they’re easy to see and access. For pre-packaged snacks such as chips and granola bars, we like to use wire baskets so employees can easily read the package before they grab it. 

Group items by food types (fruits, veggies, energy bars, chips, sweets, etc.) and dietary needs (vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.). Labeling the containers will make it a lot easier for a hangry coworker to find what they need quickly. Buy a label maker to facilitate this.

Arrange Shelves Wisely

When it comes to arranging items on your pantry shelves, take notes from retail stores, which place high-priority items at eye level and at the checkout. Why? When items are placed where you can easily see them, you’re more likely to reach for them. To achieve this, we’re big fans of open shelving versus cabinets to keep your snacks on display. 

Keep popular items front and center. As snacks approach their expiration date, be sure to move them to the front so they’ll go faster than newer items. Or if there’s a spot in the office where your team tends to stand around for a long time, such as the watercooler, place snacks there, too, so people are more likely to eat them.

Struggling to make room? A snack wall is a space-saving tactic to bring high visibility to your pantry items. Not only will you cut down on countertop clutter, but you’ll also prevent food waste by ensuring snacks stay top of mind. 

Check out this snack wall we built for Yelp. When you’re a Crafty client, all you need to do is find an empty wall, and we’ll do the heavy lifting.

Keep Your Office Pantry Clean and Clutter-Free

Don’t forget to add a trash can by every snack station so you don’t end up finding wrappers piled on shelves. It’s also a good idea to stock some basic cleaning supplies, such as paper towels and wipes, nearby for quick wipe-downs (this is especially useful for coffee stations).

Budget-Friendly Solutions for Your Office Pantry

Keeping your pantry stocked can easily take a big bite out of your budget. The good news is there are ways to buy your team’s favorite snacks without breaking the bank.

Bulk purchasing

Buying in bulk often saves you money by reducing the unit price of a product. Wholesale club memberships are helpful for this.

Subscription services

Subscribing to an office food delivery service like Crafty ensures you’ll get competitive prices and the peace of mind of an F&B industry expert. 

Partnership discounts

Check with vendors to see if you can partner with them to get discounts or wholesale pricing. 

Office pantry items supplier

Consolidate your F&B spend by working with Crafty. Our onsite service team will deliver items and stock your office pantry, and our centralized tech platform will track consumption trends, manage inventory, and ensure you stay within your budget.

How an Office Pantry Boosts Employee Engagement and Wellness

What does an office pantry have to do with employee engagement? As it turns out, quite a bit. 

Food can foster:

• Loyalty. Sixty-one percent of employees in a Sharebite survey said they might leave their role for a similar job and salary at a different company that offers meal benefits. 
  
  
• Productivity. A study published in Population Health Management found that employees who rarely ate low-fat foods such as fruits and vegetables were 93% more likely to experience a larger decrease in productivity.
  
  
• Happiness. In a survey of over 1,000 office workers, those who got free food at work were about 20% more likely to say they were “extremely” or “very” happy at work than those who did not get free food.
  
  
• Camaraderie: On top of the nutritional benefits a workplace pantry can confer, it also nourishes friendship. You’ve probably heard about the watercooler effect: Gathering spaces in your workplace serve as important touchpoints for collaboration and connection.

But it’s not enough to just set up a pantry and hope employees interact with it and each other. Ensure your F&B program’s success by planning activities around it, including:

• Wellness challenges. Encourage camaraderie and competition by challenging your team to a health-related stunt. For example, go sugar-free for one week (and stock up on healthy foods and drinks with no added sugars).

• Cooking demonstrations. If you have an office kitchen with a stovetop, invite a local chef to host a cooking demonstration for lunch one day.

• Themed snack days. Holidays are easy targets for themed snack days. Can you stock up on spooky snacks for Halloween, for instance?

At the end of the day, appreciation plays a huge role in employee engagement. And across cultures, offering refreshments to someone or sharing a meal with them shows that you care. Let your employees know you value them with employer-provided snacks that nourish their wellbeing.

Build the Perfect Office Pantry With F&B Experts

You know your employees best, and we know F&B insights best. When we team up, we’ll be unstoppable. Let Crafty craft your dream office pantry stocked with your team’s favorite snacks to keep them fueled, boost their productivity, and foster team bonding. 

Get in touch to explore your options. Office pantry bliss awaits!