Challenge
- Fast and efficient service is crucial for attracting visitors to your booth.
- Blendsmiths needs equipment that dispenses its powders and concentrates without compromising on quality.
- Manual pouring is slow, inefficient, and less appealing to attendees walking past.
Solution
- Flo-Smart dispenses a serving of iced matcha in less than six seconds.
- It dispenses Blendsmiths’ drinks efficiently and retains their quality and flavour profiles.
- Automatic jug sensors and hands-free dispensing make the process faster and free up time to speak to visitors.
When you’re showcasing your products at trade shows – whether that’s powdered matcha or espresso concentrates – quality and speed are essential. Compared to coffee shops or restaurants, trade shows are even faster-paced. To quickly grab the attention of passers-by, you need to be ready to serve drinks on the fly, always having a fresh serving on hand.
This is easier said than done, but it’s absolutely crucial to attract visitors to your stand and keep them engaged with a fresh sample of your products. For Blendsmiths, a Manchester-based company that sells matcha powder, drinking chocolate, and chai, Flo-Smart was the ideal system to meet these requirements.
To learn about how Flo-Smart excels at dispensing iced matcha for Blendsmiths, I spoke to Ryan Moore, the company’s co-founder and Managing Director. Read on for his insight.
Helping Blendsmiths with iced matcha service at trade shows
Blendsmiths uses Flo-Smart systems at trade shows worldwide to quickly and efficiently dispense portions of iced matcha lattes, made using its matcha powder.
The system can automatically dispense a serving of iced matcha in just six seconds. This makes it incredibly easy to prepare a drink for visitors as they walk past the Blendsmiths booth. It’s a collaboration that began earlier in 2025, with the Blendsmiths team using Flo-Smart systems at London Coffee Festival, World of Coffee Geneva, and HOST Milano.
“As we don’t have our own outlets, we tend to use Flo-Smart at the events we exhibit at – many of which are overseas,” Ryan tells me. “Clunky equipment can breed frustration, so the ease of switching from different-sized cups and jugs for our customers is perfect for the overall experience.”
In this sense, Flo-Smart’s automatic jug sensor has been especially useful for Blendsmith’s iced matcha service. When you choose the automatic dispensing profile, the system will automatically pour the right amount of liquid based on the jug’s volume. For other use cases, it also has semi-automatic or fully manual dispensing. This means the Blendsmiths team can swap from larger servings of iced matcha to individual servings at the press of a button.
Ryan also highlights Flo-Smart’s easy maintenance as another key benefit. “Working with powders can be a messy business,” he says. “Having the integrated jug rinser built into the system is really helpful. It reduces mess, saves time, and makes for a smoother overall experience.”
These are widespread benefits that come in handy at trade shows – but compared to other drinks like iced coffee, matcha has specific storage concerns. “Left unattended, our matcha powder will settle in the milk bladders underneath the counters,” Ryan says. “Flo-Smart’s built-in agitation mechanics keep the liquid blend moving, which is paramount to offering a beverage we’re proud to serve.”
No matter whether you’re dispensing pre-prepared powder blends or concentrates at trade shows, Flo-Smart systems can meet your needs. “We’ve been experimenting with a pre-made matcha concentrate, in which we simply transfer one of Flo-Smart’s inlet tubes,” he explains. “It’s a seamless transition that works really well.”
In this regard, Flo-Smart systems help Blendsmiths to address the challenges of trade show service: namely, slow, inconsistent, or visually unappealing dispensing. “Customers who swing by our stand and run their own coffee shops will, without fail, ask about the equipment. They can see first-hand that it’s a solution to their pain points.”
Reflecting the quality of your matcha powder or concentrate
For the Blendsmiths team to show off the quality of their ingredients at trade shows, fast drink dispensing alone isn’t enough. They also need equipment that preserves flavour and does justice to the work their team puts into developing products.
“Flo-Smart does justice to the quality and flavour of our matcha powder, without a doubt,” Ryan tells me. “Naturally, most of our café community uses our powders to make matcha hot, but we’ve recently seen the consumption of iced drinks increase year-on-year with no sign of slowing down.”
Made from food-grade stainless steel nozzles and compatible with industry standard bladders, Flo-Smart dispenses your pre-prepared drinks without any compromise on flavour and aroma. Similarly, you can choose between two-tap and four-tap models, meaning you can dispense several different liquids at once without slowing you down. For instance, you may use one tap to dispense matcha latte concentrate, like Blendsmiths, and another to dispense milk to dilute it into a serving.
For this reason, Ryan believes Flo-Smart can be just as useful for coffee shops and consumer-facing settings as it is for Blendsmiths at trade shows. “The success of any café is built on an excellent customer experience,” he tells me. “Speed of service and efficiency play a significant role in how this is perceived.
“Flo-Smart is offering a solution to an otherwise slow process. From an iced drinks perspective, it doesn’t just deliver the drink in a matter of seconds. The quality of the finished beverage is also excellent.”
He sees it as an essential pragmatic solution to address the bottlenecks caused by slow service, both for consumer-facing environments and for trade shows. “In commercial environments, when the queues are long, you’re two staff members down, and the air conditioning is broken, the pressure is on,” he explains.
“Knowing that you have equipment that simplifies your processes helps you to keep your head up and properly serve the customers who choose to spend their hard-earned money at your café, or visit your booth at an exhibition,” he says.
When it comes to iced matcha service at trade shows, Flo-Smart has helped the Blendsmiths team optimise their operations without compromising on quality. Most importantly, it’s helped them to focus on the human aspect of fresh drinks service.
“While some people might worry about automation, it allows us to have conversations again. It shows that collaborating with technology is ultimately better for the customer experience.”
If you’re interested in a Flo-Smart dispenser for trade show service, visit our website or get in touch with us directly.
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