Whether you run a high-volume coffee shop, hotel bar, or a pop-up installation, serving iced coffee fast is a top priority. After all, customers value convenience over everything when it comes to service. In fact, up to 80% of customers consider speed a top factor influencing their purchasing decisions.
Therefore, having an iced coffee tap that automatically dispenses the drink instead of preparing each serving manually has a range of benefits. With it, you speed up your serving times to cater to more customers in a day. That said, you can also guarantee consistent flavours and quality across each serving.
To learn more about the benefits of an iced coffee tap, I spoke to Ben Kauffman. He is the founder of The Kauffie Company, a specialty roaster based in London, England.
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The current bottlenecks with serving iced coffee
When it comes to serving popular cold drinks like iced coffee, conventional methods can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Generally speaking, coffee shops and other food-service businesses have two options.
Firstly, and less commonly, you can pre-brew a batch of iced coffee and pour it into a cup for each order. Then, the barista can add milk or syrup based on the customer’s order. However, it’s an inconsistent and error-prone method. Baristas may spill some of the drink while pouring, or the flavour notes may dull during refrigeration.
The alternative is the most common method of serving iced coffee. Baristas pull an espresso shot, prepare a cup of milk, and mix the two for the customer. While it’s a good way to enhance flavour and freshness, it’s a manual process that usually takes around one minute per drink. This slows service and may create additional stress for baristas during the morning coffee rush.
Using either of these manual methods, your staff will be under pressure to prepare drinks faster and more precisely. Even the most experienced baristas can only produce a limited number of drinks at any given time, so bottlenecks are inevitable.
It’ll cause queues, customer dissatisfaction, and potentially lost sales as well. In the USA, 59% of customers would switch to another business after multiple poor service experiences, even if they like the product. Therefore, guaranteeing a good customer experience is essential.
To address these concerns, iced coffee tap systems such as Flo-Smart can dramatically increase your efficiency. By offering on-demand dispensing solutions, you can bypass manual serving and guarantee quality and speed. In an environment where every second counts, these are key factors in keeping customers happy.
How Flo-Smart’s iced coffee tap increases your efficiency
Flo-Smart’s chilled-line beverage dispensing system is designed to streamline service, reduce downtime, and deliver consistent results with a single touch of the screen.
Unlike manual dispensing methods, such as preparing a batch or pulling an espresso shot, Flo-Smart equipment is more efficient. It draws from chilled kegs or bag-in-box systems refrigerated in your storage space. This means that baristas don’t need to go back and forth to under-counter fridges or storage rooms. Therefore, they can serve more drinks with less work required.
“The benefits of having an iced coffee tap are very simple,” Ben says. “You’re able to sell more iced coffee quickly and conveniently for your customers.”
Flo-Smart’s precise portion control technology also removes human error from your operations. By determining preset options for portion and jug sizes, Flo-Smart pours drinks automatically, requiring no staff input. It also has semi-automatic and manual methods, giving baristas full control over how much iced coffee to dispense.
The time saved with a Flo-Smart iced coffee tap goes beyond waiting for espresso shots or mixing drinks. It also means that baristas don’t need to reach into fridges to get milk, measure out portions, or clean up any spillage.
It means that all of your drinks will be identical, from the flavour to the serving sizes. You won’t need to consider variability between your staff or human error entering the equation.
“The ideal iced coffee tap is easy to operate and very easy to customise,” Ben adds. “I’m a coffee roaster and fanatic, so I want the absolute best quality to make my coffee shine.”
The time and money savings from a Flo-Smart iced coffee tap
A Flo-Smart iced coffee tap can dispense a serving in just six seconds. Compared to traditional manual preparation methods, which can take closer to a minute, this results in significant time savings. During a two-hour rush, a single Flo-Smart unit can serve hundreds of drinks without compromising on consistency, quality, or serving temperature.
Additionally, Flo-Smart systems can dispense a number of other drinks outside of iced coffee. For example, you can use one of its taps to serve dairy, plant milks, cold brew, or iced teas as well. With either the two-tap or four-tap system, you can dispense different types of liquid simultaneously to cater to a range of customer requests.
This level of versatility is becoming increasingly necessary for food-service businesses. Recent studies show that iced coffee is now the third most popular drink among 18- to 34-year-olds. Offering a flexible system that can handle iced coffee alongside seasonal teas or cold brew helps you match these demands and diversify your menu.
The benefits of an iced coffee tap extend beyond flexibility and time savings. Alongside this, if you can serve drinks faster, you can scale up your operations and increase your revenue. If you can serve an extra 50 drinks a day with Flo-Smart, for example, that translates to a significant amount of sales across the year. For businesses with multiple locations, these gains scale quickly and impressively.
Furthermore, the money you can save on drink waste, thanks to Flo-Smart’s automated dispensing, is significant. Recent studies show that the average UK hospitality business loses over £10,000 a year in waste food and drink, through overproduction and spoilage. With the Flo-Smart’s automatic and preset portion sizes, it entirely eliminates this concern – and saves you money.
While the Flo-Smart iced coffee tap quickly prepares a drink, staff can focus on other tasks in the meantime. Using an intuitive touchscreen system, they don’t need specific training, and can focus on consumer interactions and general maintenance instead.
Therefore, the benefits of a Flo-Smart iced coffee tap extend beyond just the increased serving times. You’ll also see improvements in your efficiency, room to scale your revenue, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In high-volume hospitality and foodservice settings, this efficiency can hugely increase your sales – or even lower prices. “Therefore, you’ll have a lower cost of labour that can transfer to your customers,” Ben says.
That said, it can also expand beyond just iced coffee. Flo-Smart machinery can also dispense a range of other drinks, from matcha to cold brew. As long as it’s a chilled, non-carbonated beverage on your menu, you can dispense it with ease and precision.
Integrating a Flo-Smart iced coffee tap into your beverage strategy allows you to keep pace with growing trends while optimising your time and profit margins. It removes the friction from cold drink service and sets your operation up for future success.
To find your own Flo-Smart iced coffee tap, visit our website or get in touch with us directly.
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