Have you ever thought about what could happen to the retail industry in the nearest future? How would future c-stores and shops look like? What are the latest retail trends and forecasts? What features would make a huge impact on the retail industry in general?
“Without my friends there’s a little bit of me, but with a lot of friends there’s plenty of myself” – lines from a soviet children’s song perfectly describes the essential meaning of co-operation in any business. You can be the author of most innovative solutions, to develop breakthrough technologies, but it’s only going to be possible to bring it to a state of “finished product” by going through a complex chain of cooperation with a number of business partners.
And this is true even for applied business initiatives of the microscopic, compared to the market standards, formats. Opening a small shop selling two or three positions of coffee beverages and about the same range of pastries (i.e. we’re talking about literally micro scale of business, not even SMBs), immediately causes the owners of such an enterprise to the need to acquire the suppliers of coffee machines, cups, coffee beans or ready-to-use blends , semi-finished products for baking, microwave oven – and so on and so forth.
When traditional logistic models and the organization of the supply chain have jeopardized the dynamic growth of the company, the owners of Costa Coffee went all-in. The company completely changed the leadership, adopted a new strategy for the organization of supply, hired a new logistics operator, and also introduced a new enterprise software to provide a new level of benefit from the telemetry component of its system. We believe that the final result speaks for itself.
Author’s note
When I was preparing this article, i was surprised by how similar problems had to be solved in RusHOLTS around the same time. An illustration of the similarity could be invention of the rad by Marconi and Popov. The problem is in the air and solution comes to those who are looking for it. Only RusHOLTS had to be tis own “new” logistics operator because of the lack of worthy proposals. No “regional partners”, no services outsourcing – only our own trained and well-managed structures that guarantee the high quality of work.
Vending as a sales technique is good – but only when it comes to newspapers, chocolates and chips, as well as personal care products. He who presses the button is the one who got the goods. Just pushed it – and continued their own way. Coffee beverages vending business now comes with minimum human involvement.
Coffee vending tend to vary in terms of product quality from “Lord, what is this ???” to “Well, okay.” Why is that? Because making of coffee – is a complex process with a thousand of nuances. No exceptions. The only thing that differs very much from a good “vending coffee» to a vending of a bad coffee” – is a chain Costa Coffee called Costa Express Company.
Costa Express Coffee – is an unexpected example of the coffee business in terms of a combination of indicators varying from “country of origin”. How this company was able to appear in the UK, a country of a totalitarian tea cult – it is a mystery. Nevertheless, it was there in 1971 when this brand appeared, which not only takes a confident second place in the World after Starbucks but represents today the very notion of “premium coffee vending” that tend to vary in terms of product quality, from “Lord, what is ???” to “Well, okay.” Why is that? Because making the coffee is a complex process with a thousand nuances. Virtually no exceptions. The only thing that is very distracting from the association with «vending coffee –is a vending of a bad coffee” – is a chain called in Costa Coffee.
In 2011, Costa Coffee, the second largest chain of coffee shops, decided to expand its portfolio and hit the vending area.
The movement in the new direction began with the acquisition of the Coffee Nation chain – thus Costa Express brand was born. Costa decided not to lose time and quickly started to transform the quality of vending coffee to new heights.
The main tool for the breakthrough was going to be a new approach to the implementation of the vending machine itself to make it an example of all that people usually invest in the concept of “innovation”.
Brewing high-quality coffee “from-grain-to-the-cup” via the vending machine – it’s a constant challenge. At some stage it was even a challenge to the very common sense. Getting a consistently high level of quality in the long run was not allowed by the specific historical moment’s technology.
The “Marlow Project” team
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