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davekro

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Mission Vending suggested I see if members here had an interest in a separate discussion link for Office Coffee Service (OCS). As this is my complete focus now after 29 years doing both vending and OCS, I would certainly find it very valuable.

 

Alternatively or in addition, please let me and other  OCS members know if you have run across a forum that focuses directly on OCS. I believe we can all benefit from more knowledge and community for each aspect of our businesses. Currently, I am actually looking for more info on the higher end automatic espresso equipment and that niche of the OCS world.

 

a side note... In the mid 80's I was offerred the coffee service at my largest account. I was afraid of coffee because I knew nothing about it. My vendor friend and mentor said unequivocally: "YOU WANT COFFEE SERVICE!"  Yes, it is a different animal than vending, but the margins are actually better for less time invested.

 

Thank you for reading this,

Dave

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Mission Vending suggested I see if members here had an interest in a separate discussion link for Office Coffee Service (OCS). As this is my complete focus now after 29 years doing both vending and OCS, I would certainly find it very valuable.

 

Alternatively or in addition, please let me and other  OCS members know if you have run across a forum that focuses directly on OCS. I believe we can all benefit from more knowledge and community for each aspect of our businesses. Currently, I am actually looking for more info on the higher end automatic espresso equipment and that niche of the OCS world.

 

a side note... In the mid 80's I was offerred the coffee service at my largest account. I was afraid of coffee because I knew nothing about it. My vendor friend and mentor said unequivocally: "YOU WANT COFFEE SERVICE!"  Yes, it is a different animal than vending, but the margins are actually better for less time invested.

 

Thank you for reading this,

Dave

 

I have only ever run across one OCS related Forum but I can't remember the name of it at the moment. It was a Russian or Romanian site so may not be that helpful unless you can speak their language anyway.

 

I find most coffee forums to be more designed for home users so you maybe better off to stick around here.

 

You mite be surprised how many OCS people come out of the would work.There is a post on here about the Saeco SG200 Coffee Machine which is one of the popular posts on this forum so you will never know.

 

It does surprise me that there are not more OCS people on here or Full Line Operators that are not also doing OCS. It is a different market here compared to the US but I would say the OCS is more competitive here than snack & drink. Seems like most operators in the US are scared of OCS.

 

I am not sure why?

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I think having a coffee subforum would be a great idea.  I have been asked about providing coffee service before and I usually say no because I have no idea about the machines nore the materials.

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Seems like most operators in the US are scared of OCS.

 

 

We have a number of locations where we do both both but it is the tradional pourover brewer and a few K-cups. I have in the past also operated a couple of Colibri machine and they did pretty good for me but.....

 

Even with almost 20 years in full line I still don't like OCS. For me, I guess its because when I started out and was growing so fast that I didn't have the time to learn about it and then was forced into it to keep some acounts and lost them eventually anyway because I did not know enough about OCS to be good at it. That bad experience still clouds the way I look at it today. To me its still more of a way to keep a potential competitor out of my location than it is as a profit center.

 

I think that for many operators their inital experiences with OCS have been along similar paths, hence the reluctance to enter the waters.

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Yes, it is a different animal than vending, but the margins are actually better for less time invested.

 

Hi Dave, because you are one of a few that are doing OCS successfully, could you please explain how you operate your OCS business in the US.

 

- are you using bean to cup machines or instant or both?

- are you charging a monthly rental for the equipment?

- are your machines setup on free vend or do customers pay?

- do you clean/fill your machines or does someone on site?

- do you charge per cup or per bag of product?

- are you also doing the traditional pour over solutions?

 

Thanks

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I think having a coffee subforum would be a great idea.  I have been asked about providing coffee service before and I usually say no because I have no idea about the machines nore the materials.

I'll emphatically repeat what I was told more than 25 years ago... "YOU WANT THE COFFEE BUSINESS!!!"  Especially thes days when price points for vending sales are +/- $1.00 for most items. It's not like it was many years ago when we sold candy and soda for 50 cents!  Plus much of the workforce these days is culturally not inclined towards using vending machines. Add in the health food craze for 10+ years and that is not positives for maintaining, let alone increasing sales! 

 

Yes coffee is competitive, but if one of your accounts is asking you for coffee, you are shooting yourself in the foot to not do some research and learn about at least the simpler forms (standard brewer with supplied coffee packets). Just avoid the more inticate and costly options, at least for now. 

 

Yes, it is A LOT of time effort to consider a new market. I am finally ending my 29 year run of snacks and soda. Now I just do coffee. My often stated line is: " Now I deliver cases of coffee, cup, sugar, creamer, plates, spoons forks etc and get paid by invoice once per month. I no longer have to load each vended item ONE BY ONE

Snickers, Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,Snickers,

Dorito, Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,Dorito,  et al.

 

I'm just saying, if you do not do regular plain office coffee service, you are missing better profits for less labor.

(unless you are in my market....  Then OCS really is a loser. Don't go there.  ;o)  Joking. There is business enough for all.  :o)

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Hi Dave, because you are one of a few that are doing OCS successfully, could you please explain how you operate your OCS business in the US.

 

- are you using bean to cup machines or instant or both?

- are you charging a monthly rental for the equipment?

- are your machines setup on free vend or do customers pay?

- do you clean/fill your machines or does someone on site?

- do you charge per cup or per bag of product?

- are you also doing the traditional pour over solutions?

 

Thanks

I am supposed to be packing for our weekend camp trip. Don't tell my wife I'm spending time here today. ;o)

Brief for now, but if we get a dedicated OCS area, I'd be glad to expand i more detail.

1) bean to cup yes. used to be billed at .80 per cup in mid late 90's. Model many use now is monthly lease fee plus product profit. This was a smaller part of business, but growing now. A new model is to sell equipment to account, then support machine with warranty of repairs and maintenace with requirement they buy all product from you. they stop buying product, they loose maintence. (these things do require regualr cleaning and maint. Not like a newco or Bunn drip brewer that you place and forget for 10 years (relatively speaking).

 

2) Free vend to employees where account pays for product and machine (mo. lease or out right purchase. Believe me, after .com boom when everybody turned off free everything, I tried doing coin vend to employee. It kept me from storing the machines, but no money being made (they had my drip brewer coffee for free right next to the Colibri or Saeco).

 

3) clean by on site is new to me in past few months. It is an uphill battle to get janatorial staff to fill the machines so far, but it is a work in progress. With bean to cup of any significant volume, you usually cannot be there every day for this. YMMV. Maybe M W & Fri??  But try to get on site to at least add powdered milk and beans and Fr. vanilla.

 

4) Majority of my bus. has been reg drip brews (plumbed into street water never pour over (for me).

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We have a number of locations where we do both both but it is the tradional pourover brewer and a few K-cups. I have in the past also operated a couple of Colibri machine and they did pretty good for me but.....

 

Even with almost 20 years in full line I still don't like OCS. For me, I guess its because when I started out and was growing so fast that I didn't have the time to learn about it and then was forced into it to keep some acounts and lost them eventually anyway because I did not know enough about OCS to be good at it. That bad experience still clouds the way I look at it today. To me its still more of a way to keep a potential competitor out of my location than it is as a profit center.

 

I think that for many operators their inital experiences with OCS have been along similar paths, hence the reluctance to enter the waters.

Mission,

Certainly if you start out with the chaepest prices with terrible margins and never raise them, it can be a loser. I should qualify my OCS comments. I have never gone looked to go into and OCS account with less than say 100 employees. Accounts with 40, 50 70+ people, can be hard to make much money. But that also depends on the companies culture. In Silicon Valley, it is not uncommon that companies supply lots of related products other than coffee. plates, plastic utensills bigelow teas, oatmeal, lipton cup-O soups etc. etc. Not all, certainly.  So to qualify my other statements...  If you have a good 100+ person account that values treating their employees well (because they want to retain their people from going to companies that treat them better), then by all means, you WANT THEIR coffee business.  If the company is really tight with their budget and do not supply much at all to employees, then they better have a higher head count to make up for it.  So I am not saying all accounts /companies are good candidates for a profitable OCS business, but some are. If they already have rock bottom OCS prices, then needing to beat those already 'too low' margins, is  definitely a losing proposition. Unless you can convince them to go to a better grade of coffee (read better margin for you) plus add more line items than they are currently supplying (like adding several flavors of Bigelow tea instaed of just plain Lipton reg. and Decaf tea), Plates utensils, ++, then pass on that one.

 

Newco makes very good equipment. About +/- $500/ brewer.  If you can get an ROI (return on investment) of 6 months, it may be worth a shot.  Like I was told by my vending mentor when I started. The three most mportant things to keep you from foing out of business are Cash flow, cash flow and cash flow> I''l modify this for COS to include Head count, head count and head count (plus staong factor of if they value spending on their employees or not). I had an insurance company in my early years that was one of the stingiest towards their employees. That company (vending only) was always marginal.

 

Dave

I may have always misunderstood what the term 'full line vending' meant. I always thought it meant OCS too as well as the always to be avoided like the plaque COLD FOOD!  ;o)

I certainly could be wrong. (ask my wife, it has happened before ;o)

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I'm working for one of the bigs that is insanely focused on coffee. Vending has mostly been a side line for them. ( I've heard every variation of the phrase "not worth the hassle" in the year I've been here. ) They pretty much only place vending machines at good coffee accounts that have demanded vending from us. ( i.e. they only want to deal with one company ) And that's the problem. They make so much money on the coffee, that they never see the value of vending. All of our vending accounts are dogs. ( Other than a couple of subsidized accounts. ) I've learned a heck of a lot about the coffee business in the past year, but my one true love will always be vending.

 

When I die, I want my ashes sold for 50 cents an ounce. Spread them around the break rooms of America. 

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