Join us for a conversation with team Cropster, a proud partner of Standart Issue 31.
Many modern espresso machines offer real-time brew data, but Cropster’s BrewBeacon goes beyond this. During product development, what were customers missing from their brew data and how does the BrewBeacon address those shortcomings?
The BrewBeacon allows our customers to have a higher viewpoint of the data. It allows them to set a standard across different machines, different coffees and even different locations. The capacity to compare and share data from each machine within different periods, in a single platform is crucial for optimization, quality assurance and ultimately reducing costs.
The BrewBeacon gives roasters more insights as to how their wholesale clients are serving their coffee, which is important in ensuring that it’s an accurate expression of what they wish to showcase to the world. Was this one of the intended use cases from the beginning, or a happy coincidence?
Ensuring that the roaster's brand is consistently represented across their wholesale partners was a key pain point we kept hearing in our interview sessions with customers. As physical training and onsite presence aren't always feasible because partners are spread out geographically, or through things like the COVID pandemic, we wanted to provide roasters a solution to gain insights into how their coffee's being brewed. These insights provide factual starting points for more useful and direct conversations that help improve the quality of coffee across the board and build a focused relationship between roaster and their clients.
Does BrewBeacon require professional installation, or can anyone do it? And can it be shared among multiple machines?
Our efforts in building the BrewBeacon hardware have always focused on easy installation. In most cases, we have found our customers have at least someone who knows their way around an Espresso Machine and is perfectly apt to install it. Plus, we have developed very detailed guidelines for practically anyone to be able to do it. A few cases do require a little more experience or work, because of how machines are hooked up in the cafes, how brands vary in the location of components, as well as brands we have yet to test with the components we have developed for connectivity.
Each espresso machine will need its own BrewBeacon, and it can sync data from up to 4 groupheads. In most cases, the device can reside entirely within the espresso machine for a neat and tidy-looking install.
This interview was published in collaboration with Cropster.
