I'm a third-grade teacher, and for the past couple of years, I've done a hot chocolate bar right before winter break. I have 30 students in my classroom, plus the volunteers who come in to help with our winter party. I needed something that would heat water, and keep it warm so the kids could have hot chocolate. I've been renting one, and this year decided it just made sense to buy one so I could keep using it year after year. As I mentioned, I needed to have enough hot water for 40 cups of hot chocolate. I was worried this wouldn't be big enough, but let me tell you it is more than enough! I bought the 16 oz to-go coffee cups that have lids, and had the volunteer fill them about halfway with hot water, we ended up only using about half of the container of water. The machine gets super hot so I didn't let the kids touch it, I had an adult volunteer pour the water. You can make coffee in it, it has all the parts but I just needed hot water. It took about an hour to get the water warm enough that the kids could have enjoyed the hot chocolate but we had it on for 2 hours and the water was super hot, I had to send someone to go get ice to put in the kids' cups. If I was making coffee I would probably need it to get that hot, but for just heating water, I should have turned it off after an hour. It held the heat for a long time too.