But that's not yet enough to get the company to its goal of increasing coffee volumes by 25% next year. "We truly do believe in offering a good-quality coffee. It's what happens to our coffee after we brew it that we have the biggest issues with," Marshall Dujka, one of the owners of the 170-store chain, told CSP Daily News companion newsletter [image-nocss] Foodservice Digest.
The Houston-based company is currently examining how it brews its coffee, the sizes it provides and the actual cups and graphics tied to the coffee in the hopes of launching an improved program by the fall coffee season.
Coffee currently accounts for about $1.7 million, or about 1.53%, of Timewise sales. But Dujka said that he believes there is more margin to be had by eliminating waste, and by using the right brewing techniques based on the individual store's coffee volume. Currently, the company uses a combination of glass pots and urns.
The upcoming, more consistent brewing program will keep glass pots in the mid-volume stores, and urns in the higher-volume locations and travel centers. As for lower-volume stores, Dujka said, "That's where all the trouble is, because how do you continually present a great quality cup of coffee to a customer when you only have someone walking in there once out of every hour or so to buy it from you?"
As an option for those stores, the company is turning to soft heat. Soft heat works like an electric thermos containing a heating element to keep the coffee warm without "cooking it," so it lasts longer while maintaining quality--meaning less waste.
"And if you couple the 25% increase in volume with the savings and the reduction in waste, now you're talking some significant dollars," Dujka said.
Because of the quality of the coffee and the effort to enhance it, "we just felt like we had to step up the cup, and we had to step up the graphics in the store," said Kevin Doody, a consultant to Timewise.
Currently, the company offers a tan Styrofoam cup featuring the words, "Roasted Bean Coffee Company," the proprietary brand name given to Timewise by its coffee distributor, Birmingham, Ala.-based Royal Cup Coffee.New graphics will include a theme of "searching for the perfect bean," featuring an explorer on expedition and bright, vibrant colors. The company is looking at either a styro wrap that will insulate like Styrofoam but allow for handling the colors better, or a paper cup with an air-insulated second level of paper, which also will hold the colors better.
"We believe that we're serving a really top, high-end cup of coffee, in terms of quality and flavor. And we think the cup needs to fit more in line with the coffee we're serving," Dujka said, adding that the new graphics and cup give it a more upscale, quality appearance.
Another addition to the company's arsenal will be the "long overdue" introduction of a 24-ounce cup. Dujka said, "People want bigger and they want more value, and so obviously everyone benefits from a larger cup. We can offer a better price per ounce to the customer, and we'll actually make more penny profit on the cup. And it allows the coffee to be poured quicker, so you don't spend as much time worrying about the coffee that's not getting sold."
"The numbers already point to it," Doody added. "Our 20-ounce is 67% of our volume. We keep the 12 [ounce] because we don't want the consumer to think we arbitrarily supersized them.... But we go to the stores and watch people pour coffee and almost everybody that gets the larger cup fills it to about three quarters. People like to drink something in their car that's not full, so the bigger cup you have, the happier they seem to get because they don't fill it up."
Timewise will continue to sell the 12-ounce cup, but Dujka said that he believes price points would be more enticing on the larger sizes. "If they want to, it's there for them, but we'd like to encourage them to move up if for no other reason than to get the coffee out of that pot and into a cup and down the road quicker."
The company does 20% of its sales in refillable coffee, allowing customers to bring in their own mugs or purchase one from Timewise to refill. While a 12-ounce cup of coffee might go for $1.09, a refill of up to 16 ounces is 79 cents. A 20-ounce coffee costs $1.29, but a refill is only 99 cents from 20 ounces to 44 ounces.
"The cup is about a third of the cost of a cup of coffee," Doody said. "When somebody brings their own in, we don't pay for a cup or lid, so we can afford to pass that on to the customer."
As for why the company is stepping up their coffee program now, Dujka said, "We are focusing on doing a better job of selling what we already sell well. And incrementally, I think the profits gained will be significantly higher than if we wandered off into a new program just to say we did."For even more foodservice category news,click here to subscribe to Foodservice Digest.
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