Why Coffee Machine Services, of Doncaster, decided to sell coffee machines, as well as servicing and reconditioning them…
When Joyce Crowe and Martyn Hutchinson (pictured), set up Coffee Machine Services just three years ago, their ambitions were relatively modest. It was more ‘can we make a living?’ than ‘how big can we become?” However, as John Lennon said, ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans’…
Martyn told us: ‘I’d been trained as an engineer, on locos with British Rail, on fork-lift trucks and in the car industry, so Joyce and me weighed it up: ‘if I could recondition maybe three or four coffee machines every month, the numbers would stack up. We decided to go for it.’ But there was trouble ahead, potentially: Martyn had to go into hospital…
‘When I came out there were ten machines waiting to be fixed’, he says. From that moment, it was ‘game on’ for Coffee Machine Services. Taking on a new member of staff, (Martyn’s nephew, Michael Staniland), the company began to grow and soon, it had outstripped the couple’s humble expectations to become a notable ‘player’ in the north of England.
Soon, the company outgrew its start-up space and new premises were required. ‘We got lucky’, Martyn said, ‘there was spare capacity at the business park we called ‘home’ and we were able to move just a few yards, to premises that gave us a much larger workshop, meeting rooms and a showroom space.’
Showroom space? Why would a firm of ‘coffee machine fettlers’ need a showroom? The truth is that, as Martyn travelled throughout the north, from Leicester to Newcastle and from coast to coast, he observed that ‘not all was well’ in the HoReCa business.
‘We kept hearing about people signing silly deals’ he said, ‘and maintenance contracts they didn’t need. It struck me that there was a niche for us, and that niche was in the provision of easy-to-operate new machines that delivered great coffee, as well as in the care and maintenance of existing kit. Many of our customers used kit that obliged them to lock-in to a service contract that required them to pay repair charges above and beyond. It didn’t seem fair to me; I thought we could do a better deal.’
Customers also complained that visiting engineers appeared to have been at the back of the queue when the ability to provide ‘service with a smile’ was handed out. Martyn does not suffer from what his customers call ‘bad attitude’. ‘Be straight with them, be polite and make sure that having an engineer on site isn’t an impediment to getting on with the job’, he said. ‘That way, your customers will stay with you.’
‘Happy-go-lucky’ he may appear to be, but Martyn knew that that, in itself, wasn’t going to be enough: he needed a range of machines to sell that would give his customers everything they needed, whilst at the same time getting rid of things they didn’t need, such as service contracts and unbudgeted repair bills. He found what he wanted in N&W’s ‘K’ range of table-top coffee machines, notably Krea, Koro Max and Korinto. Consequently, N&W welcomed a new customer to the fold.
The new Koro Max, for example, ticks all Martyn’s boxes. ‘It’s a remarkably simple bean-to-cup machine;’ he says, ‘it’s capable of delivering hot chocolate as well as coffee and it’s very competitively priced. What’s more, there’s very little that can go wrong with it. There’s no question of selling a ‘service contract’; we just promise our customers that, if anything goes wrong, they can just call us and we’ll fix it’. Martyn is safe in the knowledge that the whole of the K range is so reliable that it’s unlikely he’ll ever rue his promise to his customers…
‘Most of the traditional coffee machines that end up in our workshop have failed due to issues with operation and cleaning.’ Martyn Hutchinson
‘Ease of use and ease of maintenance is massively important’, Martyn says. ‘Most of the traditional coffee machines that end up in our workshop have failed due to issues with operation and cleaning.’
To prove the point, in his workshop are the stripped carcasses of numerous machines. Choosing one at random, he uses a finger to scrape out the remains of the old coffee beans that had gone off. Needless to say, it was these same old coffee beans that caused the machine to break down. ‘It’s not easy to keep these machines clean’, he said. ‘You’ve virtually got to dismantle it to clean it and most customers don’t feel confident enough to do that. They think ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, but of course, by the time it is broke, they can’t fix it.
‘I could show a ten-year old how to keep a Koro Max clean in five minutes’, he said. ‘And that’s the difference. Not all coffee shops have a barista, but they all need to serve good coffee. The Koro Max and the K range in general is ideal for them and the good news is that, once it’s been properly set up, the coffee quality is excellent. The average drinker probably wouldn’t spot the difference between a coffee from a Koro Max, for example, and one from a machine that cost fifteen times more to buy.’
It’s an eye-opener, isn’t it? Here’s a relatively new company, run by a couple who, are experts when it comes to repairing coffee machines, not selling them, and yet suddenly, here they are; successfully selling state-of-the-art coffee , machines to retailers, up there on merit with ‘the big boys’.
This year, N&W will be at Caffe Culture, and the machines that have done so much to accelerate the growth of Coffee Machine Services will be the stars of the show – alongside the new Karisma, which Martyn fully expects to be ‘the best of the lot.’
As the vending market contracts, there seems to be no end to the rise of coffee shops, be they national chains or local independents: which is good news for Martyn and Joyce, and good news for any vending operator with an eye for an opportunity…
