Uncovered: Your caffeine addiction earned Sheffield uni £500k and we’re honestly shook

Listen up coffee fiends – we’ve got the receipts on just how much of your maintenance loans you’re spending on campus coffee. And you need to get a grip. Through a Freedom of Information request, The Sheffield Tab can exclusively reveal all the highest selling items at cafés on campus – and how much the uni is raking in from your less than thrifty habits.

Those of you buying your lunch at the Diamond Kitchen and Jessop Café just can’t seem to function without your daily caffeine fix. And some of your eating habits over at the AMRC are just plain weird. Just because you’re so far away doesn’t mean we aren’t giving you mountains of side eye.

Here’s a rundown of University of Sheffield students’ shameful food spending habits. Martin Lewis would not be happy.

The bizarre hash brown addiction at the AMRC

Via University of Sheffield AMRC

At the AMRC, the most ordered item is “add hash brown”. What I’m picturing is that when engineering students are taking their breaks from nuclear experiments, they’re ordering salads, pasta bowls and sandwiches – always with an extra hash brown on top. It sounds silly, but that’s what the numbers say. “Add hash brown” is by far the most popular item over there.

Given the atomic nature of the AMRC’s research, my wild imagination makes me hope Sheffield will one day have its very own marvel superhero: Hash brown man! Who, before eating an irradiated potatoey snack, was an unassuming and bookish engineering student, but now fights crime with the aid of his two companions: Bacon Boy and the Fried Egg Fella.

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And PSA for Sheffield students who spend their days at the AMRC. If the almost £6,000 you spent on Monster Energy truly is the desperate cry for help it appears to be, we’re here for you.

We need to talk about caffeine

Consider this an intervention Sheffield students. We need a frank conversation about caffeine intake, because your consumption levels are the definition of unhealthy – and we have mountains of proof. £34,675 just on regular lattes at the Diamond alone. More than £30,000 on iced coffees at the Wave and IC. £84,502.96 on cappuccinos across all cafés. Altogether, University of Sheffield spent a truly flabbergasting total of £531,280 in 2024.

Respectfully, what the hell. If we keep paying this amount to chug down coffee in 2025, the vice chancellor will be able to go private jet shopping soon.

We bought enough burritos to stretch almost 2.5 miles laid end-to-end

Via Google Maps

While everyone’s losing their minds over coffee, Grill and Go in the SU is quietly making bank on burritos. Students spent an eye-watering £79,325 on burritos there in 2024. We don’t know how many people are shelling out the extra pound to top up their burritos with wedges, but, in theory, that means Sheffield students bought 16,025 burritos last year at Grill and Go. Based on my estimate of the average length of a burrito, if you laid out all the burritos we bought last year in a line, it would stretch the distance from Endcliffe to Sheffield train station – with hundreds of burritos left over. Forget AI. Forget crypto. Burritos are the future.

The top ten most bought items across all University of Sheffield cafés in 2024:

• Latte Regular – £203,720.21
• Flat White – £129,487.61
• Americano Regular – £105,914.98
• Cappuccino Regular – £84,502.96
• Iced Latte Regular – £82,430.94
• Wrap – £79,610.74
• Grill and Go Burrito – £79,325
• Harrogate Still Water 500ml – £43,450.24
• Hot Choc Regular – £49,681.53
• Tea – Regular (Yorkshire) – £36,420.81

Featured image via Sheffield Students’ Union