Pickle in the Middle is an Adelaide icon, serving coffee, breakfast, and lunch to Unley locals since 2015. As with any antipodean café, the coffee menu is a cornerstone – Australians have notoriously high standards when it comes to their daily caffeine fixes.
The company is going from strength to strength and plans to open doors at a second location early this year, in the brand-new festival tower, Adelaide’s tallest all-electric building.
To keep up with growing popularity and increasing foot traffic, owner Luke Halloran opted recently to install a Flo-Smart automated beverage dispenser. The installation has helped smoothen operations at the counter and reduce inefficiencies across stock controlling, labour allocation, and beverage preparation.
We spoke to Luke to get some of his feedback and a clearer picture of how Flo-Smart is helping Pickle In The Middle achieve its goals.
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Decluttering Pickle In The Middle’s bench tops and counter spaces
The Flo-Smart system is designed to declutter café working environments. Throughout a typical service period in modern coffee shops, myriad items, products, tools, utensils and containers are required.
For milk, this often means multiple jugs, various different types of dairy and non-dairy cartons or jugs, and cloths for cleaning and wiping down surfaces, among other items.
Installing a Flo-Smart system solves this problem by replacing a potentially messy and inefficient space with an elegant, easy-to-use automatic drink dispenser that dispenses directly from bladders or reservoirs stored underneath a countertop.
Pickle in the Middle has seen this first-hand.
“At Pickle In the Middle, we’ve been able to keep all the bench spaces cleaner during busy periods,” says Luke. “In the past, we’ve had milk cartons overflowing or all of the working space getting taken up by empty cartons until we get a chance to squash them down and take out the rubbish.”
A cleaner serving environment adds to the overall professional feel of a café or coffee shop, reinforcing the consumer’s trust in your hygiene and cleanliness standards.
“The benches are a lot cleaner now,” says Luke. “We don’t have things all over the place, empty cartons, etc., which looks much better.”
“We also have far fewer spills since the milk is being directly dispensed instead of done manually. The whole environment is just a lot more hygienic.”
Direct dispensing not only declutters countertops but also makes the process of retrieving and replacing milk cartons obsolete, instead offering the barista an immediate, accurate pour at the touch of a button.
“It’s a lot easier to get in and out of fridges and cycle through that way,” Luke adds. “You can access the fridges while you’re steaming milk or pulling espresso shots. You just press a button, and off you go and do other key tasks.”
Increasing Pickle In The Middle’s productivity and efficiency
A cleaner working environment lends well to enhanced efficiency. Organised spaces mean less time wasted on seeking out ingredients or cleaning up after service. Beyond the countertop, however, Flo-Smart also adds further efficiency benefits.
“We are able to fill up the bladders in our downtime, so we can pick and choose when we have time to do it instead of having to do it on demand,” says Luke.
“We serve non-dairy milk from Milk Lab, and they are planning to move to six-litre bladders shortly. This will make filling the Flo-Smart bladders even faster, instead of having to decant multiple smaller cartons. It’s going to save us even more time.”
The Flo-Smart system is the only refrigerated direct-line automated beverage dispenser for coffee shops. We designed our 18-litre containers that work seamlessly with our countertop solution, ensuring you can prepare ahead of busy service periods and operate without needing to refill or retrieve new cartons regularly.
For liquids in lower demand, smaller standard industry bladders are also available and can be dispensed concurrently without fear of cross-contamination.
Flo-Smart allows café managers and business owners to pre-set volumes for specific beverage dispensing, meaning that wasted milk and other beverages are no longer an issue. From an operational perspective, this means easier stock controlling and more accurate beverage preparation, and from a sustainability perspective, far less waste.
“We’ve seen a reduction in beverage waste since moving to Flo-Smart,” says Luke. “In the past, we’d often have either too much or too little milk when decanting to jugs. As a result, we’d always try to err on the side of too much to avoid having to re-steam smaller quantities.”
“Flo-Smart is much more accurate. When you pour a coffee, there is very little milk or no milk left in the jug. It’s really reduced our wastage.”
Flo-Smart’s effect on Pickle in the Middle’s bottom line
Improving operational efficiency and decluttering countertops means more customers can be served. Time previously consumed by cleaning up accidental spills, crushing and recycling or throwing away cartons, or retrieving and replacing milk jugs, can be refocused on service.
Less waste also means better stock controlling and tighter books, further contributing to reduced costs alongside potential labour savings, benefits Pickle In The Middle has seen itself.
“Flo-Smart is a lot more efficient with a lot less waste. It really helps with the budget,” says Luke.
“The efficiency of milk volume control is a huge advantage for cafés like ours, especially considering the high cost of alternative milks, which are more and more popular.”
“The barista can also be a lot more efficient in his or her work. They can get a lot more done without needing extra help so that you can save on labour there, too.”
To start saving costs on your beverage dispensing and decluttering your coffee shop just like Pickle In The Middle, source your own Flo-Smart system via our website or get in touch with our team directly.
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