Kuzminblog

Changing the world for better... at least the world of gas stations)

Tag: WMF

Gas stations’ non-core businesses processing – customer’s opinion

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On 14.12.2015

In Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, RusHOLTS

Pain-in-the-assLESS or “Three in a boat: men, poverty and dogs”*

 

 «I have known a Russian learn Chinese within six months. English! they learn it while you are talking to them. The children play at chess and study the violin for their own amusement.

The world will be glad of Russia when she has put her house in order»

Jerome K. Jerome

The soviet film “Three Men in a Boat” perfectly captures the spirit of Jerome’s novel, although there’s a little that’s been left from the original masterpiece. The road sets a special mood and genre of ironic travel writing is very close to my working mood. The irony is the best way to survive the road adventures both for a traveling person and for the host country. There’s no such thing as perfect road, car, gas station, caf? in this world.  Instead there are cozy and clean, minimalistic and heaped up, making part of a chain or solitary places. You want to go at one gas station, the other one you want to pass.

“When we got to Datchet we took out the hamper, the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and such like things, and started off to look for diggings. We passed a very pretty little hotel, with clematis and creeper over the porch; but there was no honeysuckle about it, and, for some reason or other, I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle, and I said: “Oh, don’t let’s go in there! Let’s go on a bit further, and see if there isn’t one with honeysuckle over it”.

History repeats itself several times, and the characters of Jerome were nearly left on the street without an overnight stay. Do you think that drivers choose gas station somehow differently? I can talk about the “rational” choice of the people for hours.

Contemporaries did not accept Jerome’s prose as the “real literature”, and yet hundred years later readers are still smiling over the adventures of his characters: they have the charm of spontaneity. It would seem that the Russian people should feel closer to “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.” By the way, I can describe the exact location, range and volume of fuel sales, call the management and staff by their names, remember caf?’s menu in almost all of gas stations located alongside the road which once was traveled by Mr. Radishchev. What Thames and adventure of the George, Jim and Harris trio mean to me? But it seems that the irony is closer to my heart and soul than social satire. I smile once again, re-reading the description of the process of packing the road basket, comparing it to the formation of commodity matrix of a store in gas station and “heroes” of economic reports are no longer extras in a sad play staged day after day, not understanding the overall meaning or their own role.

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Remote coffee machines monitoring – Saving 2 billion. Part 4

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On 26.11.2015

In Gas station chains - cafe, Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses

Part 4. Remote monitoring of coffee machines

Dmitry Petrov: It’s not the first time I hear from you about the remote monitoring of coffee machines – what’s that?

Artem Astafurov: Remote monitoring and control system is designed to bring together in a single control network an unlimited number of coffee machines installed on your chain of filling stations, regardless of their location. The main functions of this system will be the remote control of the settings, on-line monitoring of technical condition, collection of statistical data, as well as the exclusion of the risks of abuse and / or unskilled actions by gas stations’ personnel and service engineers.

In addition, the remote monitoring system allows timely identification and prevention of attempts to change coffee machines or data-sensors settings. If you try make any unauthorized changes, the system automatically restores the specified configuration parameters, and in case of disconnection of hardware and software module, it will immediately report violations in accordance with information algorithm (sending notification in an agreed format – in the form of SMS or e-mail to the list of responsible recipients).

Dmitry Petrov: I.e. instead of choosing the “best” of beans, you are suggesting installing yet another IT-solution?

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Customer service

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On 20.11.2015

In Gas station chains - cafe, RusHOLTS

The way to a man’s customer’s heart is through his stomach. The girls also love a cup tasty coffee, and the long journey makes everybody equal. The role of the caf? at gas station is to provide a tasty meal!

Gas is the same and let’s say it is equally good or even great everywhere, but we brew some gourmet coffee and will treat our customer with tasty buns, and now he’s here to stay with us. Real life experts are rubbing their hands as if they were saying “Wait ‘till we’ll tell you”. And indeed they do tell a never-ending story about customer service.

Recently I have found on the Internet one such story.

It happens that two experts are looking at the same situation from different angles. It does not change the components of the situation – poor customer service is still being that way. But an expert on corporate culture sees a way out in the education of adults, which is a hard task. From where I stand it seems to be as one more validation of propriety of non-fuel business automated straight-line organization. I swear, half of the dialogue between the well-known business coach Konstantin Kharsky and an unknown employee of the gas station would not have happened even if only the business process was organized properly.

This is an audio recording of this story. >> 

I do not know the cost of a liter of gasoline

Drivers often choose the gas station not because of the cost of a liter of gasoline – over the last few years the prices in most gas chains have been almost identical. Chains are competing via related services.

If the driver can fill a full tank or refuel it at 1000 rubles – this is a good and profitable customer. This man before this whole story had no particular preference, but chose this particular chain as it  guaranteed the quality of fuel and related services. Pretty ordinary course of conduct of our time.

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Remote coffee machines monitoring – Saving 2 billion. Part 2

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On 06.11.2015

In Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses

Рart 2. You propose to replace “the art of the barista” by an automated technology?            Part 1.
Alexander Kuzmin: Absolutely. Gas station caf? is not a glamorous coffee shop. Business of gas stations is a continuous-process model, in which customers have a clear request for the speed of service delivery and quality of products offered. The staff caters to the flow of the gas station’s customers hurrying about their business who want to spend a minimum of time to refuel their car and do not plan to “linger” in the limited space of a gas station. Therefore, making coffee at the gas station is “entrusted” to automatic coffee machines, despite their high cost in comparison with manually driven ones.

Ten years ago, “premium” filling stations segment had a brief period of time during which the leader of the Moscow market had tried to use manual espresso machine, but later abandoned it in favor of a super automatic one. For you, the quality of the coffee beans is primarily determined by whether it is suitable for the use in professional automatic coffee machines installed at your gas station.

Dmitry Petrov: Why do you talk only about super automatic machines? It seems to me that a good coffee is an “alive” beverage and it only should be made manually. At least, this is the kind of coffee I prefer to drink. This usually determines my choice of coffee. You propose to replace “the art of the barista” by an automated technology. Will the result of such a replacement instead of a fragrant invigorating drink be a taste that only remotely resembles the taste of a “real” coffee?

Alexander Kuzmin: Your question already contains part of the answer. At the station works personnel without any special training as barista. Making coffee manually is not a part of their job description, so gas station operators do not have neither time nor the necessary qualifications.

Short-term training for staff will not solve the problem, because it gives only a superficial understanding of the topic and does not provide results of equal quality drinks throughout the whole chain. Let alone of an equally high level of quality. Therefore, the only solution for the given conditions is the use of professional automatic coffee machine which is properly configured and capable of producing required quality of the beverage in the required amounts with minimal staff’s participation in the preparation and service of the coffee machines.

Ksenia Van de Kamp: Business of selling coffee is based on repeated purchases. We, in the US market, see that the mass consumer is inclined to assess the quality of the coffee only in terms “tasty – tasteless” or “like – dislike”, so competitive opposition is won not by the one who beautifully describes the wonderful taste and quality of a coffee blend, but by the one who offers the solutions allowing to form in consumer’s mind a steady clich? “at gas station of this chain they always serve a delicious coffee” or even better – “coffee – it’s that particular gas station”.

Probably for this reason, among the participants of our round table there are no traditional suppliers of HoReCa, whose marketing is based on a long and futile arguments about the “unique” properties of coffee beans offered by them, which the end user is often simply fail to appreciate. We are focusing on another issue – how to ensure the quality of the coffee at all stations of the chain, to ensure repeatability of taste, in fact – how to make the customer think that it was at the stations of the given chain he liked coffee the most. And not to disappoint in this sense. After all, only 5% of visitors to the cafe at the gas station can be classified as true gourmets, who already know in which coffee shop their own personal coffee “guru” work and perceive gas station coffee as a reasonable compromise. The remaining 95% of customers are not interested neither in geography of coffee grains from which a purchased drink is made, nor in the sacrament of roasting. Even the starting year of manufacturer’s coming into market doesn’t matter. At the heart of their interest is still the same taste and smell of the coffee, as well as the ability to quickly get a flavored drink and be on their way.

By the way, the same demands to coffee are generated by office workers who can not leave their posts for a coffee break. Perhaps that is why it was so easy for us to work with Artem’s company – IT-specialists have always loved coffee and know the price of automatic systems. Our proposal to work on the remote device for management systems to ensure the quality of the beverage in the caf? at the gas stations was accepted with predictable enthusiasm.

Remote coffee machines monitoring – Saving 2 billion… Round table in the office of RusHOLTS

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On 29.10.2015

In Gas station chains - cafe, RusHOLTS

Рart 1. The secret of success are not the coffee beans, but the type of coffee machines and proper setting

Much has been written about the gas stations – it is a unique segment of the market, interest in which won’t disappear as long as there is a need to fill cars with the fuel. According to the standard classification businesses of any gas stations network are divided into two main categories – fuel (fuel) and non-fuel (nonfuel) ones.

“Cafe at the gas station” not only creates the “atmosphere” of the gas station, but also has a huge business potential that has yet to open on the Russian market. Indicative is the experience in Europe, where sales of non-fuel products account for about 60% of the overall gas stations’ profits. The Russian players have this figure in the range between 5 to 20%. There is some work to be done.

Interestingly enough, gas station is the only place where the business linked with the global product №1 (oil and oil-based products) is closely related to the business linked with global product №2 – coffee. So it is not surprising that these two businesses, each in their category are the main sources of profits for gas stations. Without going into the intricacies of stock prices and the prices of green coffee beans, we decided to discuss the development of this category in the domestic market and to answer the question of how the modern Russian gas station managers might enhance the effectiveness of coffee-related businesses of their chains.

This round table was attended by:

Alexander Kuzmin – an expert who has spent more than 20 years in non-fuel businesses in Russian and foreign gas station networks;

Ksenia Van de Kamp – managing partner of BMS (USA);

Artem Astafurov – Managing Partner, Senior Vice president of DataArt (USA);

Moderator – Dmitry Petrov;

Dmitry Petrov:  Today we have a rather unusual audience to talk about coffee – there are no famous barista or traditional suppliers of coffee grounds for HoReCa market among us. Instead we have an expert on non-fuel businesses for gas stations, innovative marketing specialist and IT-manager of a global level company, a rather peculiar team of participants to discuss a business, traditionally surrounded by an aura of mystery and magic of coffee aroma. Don’t you think?

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Coffee machines remote monitoring – BMS Coffee Control. To be continued

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On 23.10.2015

In Gas station chains - cafe, Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses

We’ve met Ksenia Van de Kamp, managing partner of Breakthrough Marketing Solutions, both in the United States and Russia at the round tables on the non-fuel businesses of gas stations.

Since then, we’ve had a lot of hard work on a system for coffee machines remote monitoring – BMS Coffee Control. Adaptation of a breakthrough marketing solution to the Russian realities turned out to be a rather difficult. Ksenia and her team create really “breakthrough marketing solutions” for retail and HoReCa, and I say without hint of irony. And her developments don’t stop at coffee machines monitoring systems only.

Even programmers of our IT department like to put on a modest air. “Is the data transfer from machine to machine a miracle by modern standards?”. Not only they are wrong, they’re saying only half-truth. If it was so easy all microwave ovens, coffee machines and washing machines would have been connected to each other long time ago. But the market is trying to repeat solutions that provide great economic benefit. Yesterday Ksenia sent feedback on the work of our Russian colleagues. She compared the functionality of BMS Coffee Control and one of the Russian products.

“Dear Russian colleagues from “ctrl + coffee” made a step forward, almost repeating the starting IT-solution of BMS dating back to 2010-11. My congratulations!

Of those materials, which were presented by them, I saw a number of fundamental differences of their solution from BMS Coffee Control functionality as of 2015:

1. The authors are positioning their product as a “coffee machines remote control system”, but it is the “remote control” functionality is lacking from their presentation materials. Simple activation of the touch screen using a barcode scanner and a cloud service is not yet its remote control. Remote control is possible only in the mode of two-way communication with a coffee machine that, judging by the description, is not yet implemented.

2. According to the materials submitted, the solution does not exclude coffee drinks cross-picking after activating the touch screen of coffee machines, as barcode scanner simultaneously activates all the buttons of coffee machine’s display.

3. Collection of data about the actions of the coffee machine is a standard factory option from any modern producer. The task of remote monitoring system – an automatic analysis of the coffee machine and delivery of email alerts when critical errors occur with the possibility of remote fixing. These basic functions are implemented in BMS Coffee Control.

4. The solution is presented as an option for coffee machines Thermoplan. How universally applicable it is and suitable for coffee machines from other manufacturers such as BMS Coffee Control?

Conclusion: so far the solution is not a rival for the latest releases of BMS Coffee Control.
In order to approach the level of BMS Coffee Control 2015, you must:
– develop solutions for the real two-way coffee machines monitoring;
– create software for monitoring center for its operators could not only monitor, but also correct the coffee machines work remotely in real time;
– develop a solution to activate coffee machine only one button, activating pouring of a drink, which was purchased by the customer, according to the barcode recieved;
– develop a solution for selling and control of beverages, purchased with regular office passes used in modern business centers.

Good luck!”

In an emergency, you do not go up to the level of your expectations, but will fall to the level of your training! Let’s raise the level of our industry together, dear Russian colleagues.

WMF in Russia – back to the leadership!

By

On 22.10.2015

In Gas station chains - cafe

Choosing a partner for long-term co-operation is always preceded by a deep market analysis. Of course, the most promising seems working with the leaders, or at least top 3 players in the chosen segment. That is why when choosing a partner for equipping modern gas stations with automatic coffee machine we made our decision in favor of the German company WMF. It produces not the cheapest, and truth be told – one of the most expensive solutions. However, WMF is usually chosen by HoReCa leaders, therefore, in almost every corner of the world you can find a WMF coffee machine.

After-sales service – a moveable feast
The times when the price of the goods was the only instrument in the competition, are long gone. Today, the winning side is not the one who sells cheap, but the one that is able to provide a truly high-tech product with good functionality and decent reliability. However, many manufacturers producing excellent hardware after some time start to lose their position in the market, where, apparently, they should “divide and conquer”. The reason is really simple: ok, you closed the deal, but what’s next? Who will provide the equipment with quality consumables and will conduct timely maintenance works? Many manufacturers mistakenly believe that after-sales service is the exclusive concern of the operating company, in our case – of gas station’s owner. Mind games, but any malfunction even in the world’s best hardware usually attributed by the customer to the poor quality of production. It’s a proverbial speck in someone else’s eye. And it never occurs to admit the damage caused by the desire to save some money on maintenance works or on use of Chinese spare parts while repairing.

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WMF coffee machines service – «To wash or not to wash»

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On 19.08.2015

In No subject

Someone bought an exact same tennis racket like Roger Federer’s one, went to court, but the results were a bit different. “A strange man” you might think and it is unlikely that you will listen to his tennis-related advice. The cafe owner who bought some superautomatic-coffee machine and complains about the quality of the coffee is equally strange, and in no way he is an “expert”. Specialists are well aware of how the taste of coffee depends on the settings of the coffee machine and the quality of its service. It is foolish to complain about the racket, it is necessary to learn how to play. We will not be stepping on the territory of the baristas in this article focusing on the service matters.

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