Key takeaways
- Around 40% of daily coffee shop traffic comes in the morning rush, so fast, consistent, and efficient service is crucial for retaining customers.
- By dispensing milk and iced coffee in six seconds, Flo-Smart helps multi-site operations by reducing preparation time without sacrificing quality.
- Its one-touch dispensing modes also make it easy for staff of all experience levels to meet the demands of morning rushes.
For multi-site chains and high-volume coffee shops, the morning rush can be a significant challenge. On average, it accounts for 40% of a coffee shop’s daily traffic – and if you aren’t able to meet customers’ expectations, they may take their business elsewhere.
Your team members have two tasks in this regard: to serve customers quickly and to ensure each drink is as consistent and high-quality as the last. That way, you can give customers the drinks they want quickly enough to fit into their morning routine. By using dispensers like the Flo-Smart, you can adapt to these needs and handle the morning rush with ease.
To learn more about the benefits of Flo-Smart for handling busy mornings across multi-site chains, I spoke to Megan Chase. She is the Store Manager at Rosslyn Coffee’s Leadenhall Market site in London, England. Read on for her insight.
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How does Rosslyn Coffee use Flo-Smart to support drinks service at peak times?
Rosslyn Coffee uses Flo-Smart to quickly and efficiently dispense milk for espresso-based drinks during the morning rush. This helps the team across its sites quickly prepare servings without compromising on quality.
“At Rosslyn, we want to provide friendly, efficient service without compromising quality or the standard of our specialty coffee,” Megan tells me. “Flo-Smart helps us because it cuts out the time that most people would spend on grabbing bottles of milk or pouring out individual amounts.”
In this regard, Flo-Smart systems can be incredibly valuable for multi-site businesses during the morning rush. Using automatic or semi-automatic dispensing profiles, it quickly and accurately dispenses pre-set volumes of milk, iced coffee, or matcha while staff can handle other tasks. It serves drinks in less than 10% of the time that manual methods take – pouring a serving of milk in six seconds – to represent a significant time saving.
With two- and four-tap models available, you can pour different liquids at the same time to meet a range of customer demands. “We use Flo-Smart for dairy and oat milk options, so we can be steaming milk while it pours out the perfect quantity,” she explains. “It cuts out that crucial time we need during morning rushes, where we’re making hundreds or thousands of coffees.”
One of the key advantages of Flo-Smart for peak times is its automatic jug sensor. With this setting activated, it automatically detects the jug’s volume and pours the corresponding amount of liquid based on your selection. “It’s so useful, because I can be steaming with one hand and then with the other hand, grabbing a jug and putting it into the Flo-Smart,” she explains. “This also means we have a lot less wastage, too, because the correct amount of milk is poured each time.”
That said, the three dispensing modes – automatic, semi-automatic, and manual – allow your staff to adjust strategy for each drink. It’s something Megan uses frequently at Rosslyn. “We use the semi-automatic function a lot in the summer, because it helps with a one-touch fill for all of our iced latte cups,” she says. “That’s very handy during the summer rushes.”
With the multi-tap feature, you can prepare different menu items at the same time – not just coffee. Flo-Smart is also compatible with matcha, cold chocolate drinks, wine, and more. This makes it suitable not just for multi-chain coffee shops, but also for bars and restaurants.
Therefore, the speed, accuracy, and versatility of Flo-Smart systems are crucial for Rosslyn’s staff across sites as they prepare and serve drinks at peak times. It enables the team to diversify their drinks range without sacrificing their quality or efficiency.
Making the multi-site morning rush more efficient
Flo-Smart’s qualities make it suitable not just for Rosslyn’s various locations, but other multi-site coffee chains, too. This is particularly true for coffee shops that need fast service to keep customers happy and reduce queuing times.
“I think the main benefit for other multi-site chains is the time efficiency it adds to service,” Megan explains. “They’d be able to serve more drinks in less time, so it would probably reduce labour costs as well.” For example, staff can program the Flo-Smart to dispense milk while they pull espresso shots, speeding up the process of preparing milk-based drinks.
The benefits are vast: not only can you speed up service times and improve your overall efficiency, but you can keep customers happy as well. With its one-touch dispensing settings, Flo-Smart is also suitable for staff of all experience levels. “It means less money on labour and higher customer satisfaction, as you get drinks out a lot faster,” she says.
The overall result is a positive impact on your chain’s reputation. If you can demonstrate a commitment to speed and quality across locations, especially during rush hours, you’ll win mindshare with customers and encourage repeat business. Then, by implementing these systems across your sites, you can offer the same high-quality experience that turns one-time customers into regulars.
There’s also an important financial aspect to optimising your drink service in peak periods. A coffee shop using equipment like Flo-Smart to speed up processes could serve ten additional drinks a day, for example. Spread this across five days, priced at £4 each, and it equates to 50 extra coffees a week. Totalled over an entire year, it represents over £10,000 of extra sales using this model. That’s less than a 12-month return on investment, without considering the added benefits.
As Megan’s experience with Flo-Smart at Rosslyn Coffee shows, it’s not enough to have equipment that prepares drinks effectively but slowly. Especially during the morning rush, when customers need to be served quickly to keep queues down, your systems need to balance quality and efficiency. Using Flo-Smart doesn’t just meet these two needs – it also represents a commitment to improved service and quality that helps you stand out from competitors.
If you’re a multi-site chain interested in getting a quote on a Flo-Smart dispenser, visit our website or get in touch with us directly.
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