Which leaves the question nobody puts on the planning list. Somebody has said they will do the tea. For thirty people. In a village hall with one kettle.
Here is the arithmetic and the method.
How much tea to buy
One bag makes one mug. The mistake is buying one bag per guest, because people come back for a second and a third.
| Guests | Mugs to plan for | Tea bags |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 30–40 | 40 |
| 30 | 45–60 | 60 |
| 50 | 75–100 | 100 |
Count roughly a mug and a half to two mugs per person across a two-hour morning, then round up. Bags keep, so leftovers are not waste.
For a morning that size, one large box does the job and costs less per cup than several small ones: Tetley Original English Breakfast, 240 bags covers a 30-person morning four times over. If you run the hall's events all year, the 1,100-bag catering box is the one to keep in the cupboard.
Milk: about a pint for every ten to twelve mugs, if most people take it. Buy more than you think.
Do not brew one enormous pot
This is where hall tea earns its reputation. A big pot is made at half past nine, the bags stay in, and by eleven o'clock it is bitter, dark and stewing on a hot plate.
Tea does not improve with waiting. The tannins keep extracting for as long as the leaf is in the water, and heat holds the reaction going.
Brew in rotation instead. Two or three medium pots, made as they are needed, with the bags taken out after three to four minutes. One person on pot duty, refilling, is faster than one enormous urn of tea nobody wants to drink.
Use the urn for water, not for tea. An urn is excellent at holding water near boiling. It is poor at holding brewed tea, because it cannot take the bags out. Fill it fresh, draw water off for the pots, and keep the tea itself in a teapot or an insulated jug.
Refill the urn with fresh water. Topping up and reboiling the same water all morning makes flat, dull tea. Fresh water carries the dissolved air that makes a cup taste lively.
If you are buying a pot for the hall rather than borrowing one, our teapot buying guide explains what actually matters — a pot that pours without dribbling, and a lid that stays on when you tip it.
Milk in jugs, sugar on the table
Never milk the pot. Half the room takes it strong, a few take it black, and someone is dairy-free. Jugs on the table, everybody sorts themselves out, and you are not making a second pot for the person you got wrong.
Have something for the people who cannot have caffeine
At any gathering of thirty, some people will not be drinking ordinary tea — pregnancy, medication, or they simply will not sleep if they have it at eleven in the morning. Two boxes covers nearly everyone:
- Decaf. Tetley Decaf English Breakfast, 120 bags tastes like a normal cup and takes milk. Worth knowing: decaffeinated means most of the caffeine removed, not all of it. FDA on decaf Our decaf tea guide compares the main UK boxes.
- Caffeine-free herbal. Twinings Pure Peppermint and Twinings Pure Camomile contain no caffeine at all. Peppermint is the one that disappears fastest next to a cake table.
The cake table
If people are bringing home baking, put a card next to each plate saying what is in it.
You do not need a food hygiene certificate to bake for a charity event, and a one-off morning that your council does not treat as a food business is not legally required to provide allergen information. Do it anyway. The official guidance recommends keeping a note of the recipe or ingredients for any homemade cake so you can tell someone what is in it when they ask, and somebody always asks. Providing food at community and charity events
For anything shop-bought, keep the packaging beside the plate so people can read it themselves.
As for what to put out: our tea and cake pairing guide and the best biscuit to dunk have strong opinions on both.
Registering
Sign-ups, fundraising packs and posters all come from Macmillan directly, not from us — start at macmillan.org.uk/coffee-morning.
Put the kettle on early. Take the bags out.
