Big Ambitions Water Cooler: Where to Buy and What It Does

The Water Cooler is one of the cheapest items in the game and one of the most searched, for a simple reason: an employee asks for it, the demand shows up in their profile with a priority tag, and the shop that sells it is not the shop most players are standing in.

Where to Buy It and What It Costs

Both the community wiki and the BiggerAmbitions fan database list the Water Cooler at $130 from the same two stores. The Water Fountain price comes from the fan database only; the wiki page for it has no purchase data.

If you cannot find it at IKA BOHAG, you are not imagining things. In August 2025 a player reported that the cooler had vanished from IKA even though the in-game help still listed it there, and the developer confirmed it was supposed to be stocked and would be patched back in. Mr. Scott’s Office Supplies is the safer trip if you are on a deadline.

For everything else those two shops carry, see where to buy.

What It Actually Does

The Water Cooler has no customer capacity and no production capacity. It sells nothing and serves nobody. Its entire function is the Equipment category of employee demands.

Every employee can carry up to three demands, each tagged Critical, Important or Nice to have, and meeting them keeps the employee satisfied — the higher the priority, the bigger the effect on satisfaction. The Water Cooler joined the game as an item in the EA 0.4 major update (December 2023), and the same update is where office employees gained the ability to demand one. Lawyers and purchasing agents both list it among their possible equipment demands on the wiki, alongside coffee machines, fridges and meeting tables; players on the Steam forums also report factory staff asking for a fridge, a water cooler and a coffee machine.

So the practical rule: if you run a headquarters, a law firm or any office-type business, expect the demand to appear eventually, and keep $130 aside for it.

Does the Water Fountain Count?

Yes. The EA 0.9 build 3226 patch notes state that the Water Fountain now also satisfies the Water Cooler employee demand. This follows the general rule from the employee wiki: any furniture item of the same type that is more expensive can substitute for the demanded one, the way a Stump Mesh Office Chair satisfies a demand for an Office Chair.

Whether you would want to spend $1,250 instead of $130 is a different question. The fountain makes sense only if you already own one for interior reasons; buying it to satisfy a cooler demand is paying ten times over.

Does It Need Refilling?

None of the sources we checked — the community wiki, the patch notes back to EA 0.4, or developer replies on the Steam forums — describe any water bottle, refill or upkeep mechanic. Every listing treats it as a one-off appliance purchase: place it, and the demand is met. If a future patch adds consumables, it will show up in the release notes, which we track in what 1.0 changed.

Where to Put It

The demand is per employee and per building, so the cooler goes in the building where the demanding employee works — for a purchasing agent or logistics manager that means the headquarters, not the warehouse they manage. Nothing in the sources ties placement to a specific room or distance from a desk; anywhere inside the unit counts.

What Happens If You Ignore It

Unmet demands lower satisfaction, and the effect scales with the priority tag. A Nice-to-have cooler is a nuisance; a Critical one is the sort of thing that eventually produces resignation notices. Steam forum regulars will tell you that nobody has ever quit over a water cooler alone, and the wiki does not contradict that — but since satisfaction stacks across all three demands, a $130 fix is rarely worth the risk. The full picture of demands, benefits and schedules is in employee happiness.