The latest ground-breaking product from Pod Drinks plc won’t just make you a great drink, it’ll eliminate the number-one cause of friction in the office – the messy kitchen…
It’s saying something when the people behind the ground-breaking Xen range of drinks machines refer to their latest product, a dispensing system branded ‘Multi forma’, as their ‘most innovative yet’. Multi forma is certainly a radical product for Pod Drinks plc. Until now, the Hertfordshire based Company has specialized in the design and manufacturer of vending machines.
The coffee or tea break is a mainstay of British working life. These days, we think of a break as an opportunity to reboot; by chatting to colleagues, catching up on Facebook or having a minute or two of ‘me-time’. Given the choice, rather than slotting coins into a vending machine, we’d prefer to make our own drinks. ‘We’d much rather have our favourite brew, in our own mug, the way we like it, than something from a vending machine’, said Pod Drinks’ CEO Martin Marks. ‘But, to allow domestic ingredients into the office kitchen – whether they come in tins, jars, packets; sachets, or Tupperware– is to invite disaster.’
‘We’d much rather have our favourite brew, in our own mug, the way we like it, than something from a vending machine.’ Martin Marks
Thousands of companies, large and small, rely on supplies bought piecemeal from local supermarkets to provide staff with the ingredients required to make a brew. However, although people do prefer to make their own, research carried out by Pod Drinks shows that employees are irritated by split packets, empty tins; damp spoons and ingredients that have been cross contaminated or left open to go stale by a colleague.
Management are also frustrated by this ad-hoc arrangement, but for different reasons. Drink preparation areas are almost always messy; there’s a complete lack of cost control and to make matters worse, there are those irritated employees…
For some, single drink pouch systems are the answer, but the relatively slow dispense time prevents this type of system from being a realistic solution once staff numbers advance beyond ten people – but that’s where Pod Drinks’ ‘MultiForma’ solution comes into its own.
‘Managers want their employees to be happy and a professional system, a better way of dispensing ingredients to staff and visitors than the chaos of tins, jars and packets, is a good place to start’, Martin said. ‘Countless studies show that a messy working environment has a detrimental effect on staff, but worse still, a messy workplace affects the visitors’ perception of a company’s competence. That’s why we set out to invent a completely new category of hardware, one that’s capable of meeting the demands of a huge range of businesses of different sizes, type and industries.’
The modular, MultiForma ingredient dispensing system was the fruit of Pod Drinks’ labours. ‘MultiForma is a completely new way to dispense ingredients at work that finally offers business a viable alternative to packets, tins and jars’, Martin said.
In a box that’s just 89mm wide, MultiForma delivers everything required to stop the bitchin’ in the kitchen, in a fully functioning, stand alone ingredient dispensing module that’s designed to meet the needs of SMEs. It’s flexible, too: ‘The sky’s the limit’, Martin said. ‘Customers can specify as many ingredient dispensing modules as they require, up to a maximum of ten, and each additional module links to the next. Using our web site, customers can easily configure the perfect system for their needs. Uniquely, if after using the MultiForma for a while the customer finds they needs additional dispensing modules for extra choices or greater capacity, further modules can be ordered via the web site and simply added to the existing MultiForma in less than 60 seconds.’
At the heart of every MultiForma system are the unique ingredient Pods; factory sealed containers designed to dispense from a range of well-known ingredients brands directly into the cup. ‘They’ve been tried and tested since their introduction ten years ago’, Martin said, ‘and we’re proud of the fact that since we launched, customers have enjoyed more than 20 million dispenses from our Ingredient Pods.’ Thanks to the pods, ingredients are protected from both the environment and from accidental contamination, so they stay clean, fresh and ready for use. ‘It’s easy to use, too’, Martin says. ‘The customer simply places their cup or mug under the chosen ingredient station and in less than one second, the exact ingredient measure is dispensed electronically. Nothing touches the ingredient on its journey from pod to cup.’
Specifically designed to de-clutter the workplace, the pods are less than a third of the width of a conventional coffee jar or tin. When it’s empty, it takes just seconds to swap the used Ingredient pod for a new one. ‘It’s much easier than putting paper into a printer’, Mark said.
With pre-orders for the Multi Forma coming from as far afield as Russia, Greece and South Africa, Pod Drinks is confident that MultiForma will become the Professional system of choice for ingredient dispensing at work.
* For more information, please click here to visit the Pod Drink web site.
