Caffeine fuelled innovation

The purple and white Coffee Nation self-service coffee bars are a familiar sight across the UK, providing consistently good gourmet coffee to travellers and office workers alike. Now,

The concept of Coffee Nation is to deliver a consistently high quality cup of coffee to people on the move and the popularity of its self-service coffee bars is testament to the success of this concept. However, this success generated some challenges. Traditionally, customers would brew their coffee and then queue to pay at a conventional checkout. For those wanting a quick caffeine shot or coffee out of hours when manned coffee shops were closed, this could become a frustration.

The solution, to introduce payment at the machine, was relatively straightforward as far as cash payments were concerned. However, the ultimate goal was to create a card payment system that took advantage of chip and pin technology. So, working in partnership with the engineering and design teams at KMF, Coffee Nation embarked on an 18 month project to develop its Express payment system. This new system has opened up new markets for Coffee Nation in sectors such as education, healthcare, business and industry.

“The project was basically a blank canvas and we investigated many options before eventually deciding to develop existing technology to meet the new demand,” revealed Graham Leese, KMF's engineering manager “The existing touchscreen that is a familiar sight on Coffee Nation Machines was able to have the chip and pin technology integrated within it.”

The use of the existing touchscreen also provided a new set of challenges for the team at KMF, namely the additional components required had to fit within the existing unit. Unfazed by the challenge Graham Leese and his team, along with input from the customer, created what is now becoming one of Coffee Nation's most popular coffee bars. The Express-Pod – a new slimline version of the Express – is allowing Coffee Nation to further extend its share of the self-serve coffee market by simplifying the transaction.

“The work we are doing with Coffee Nation is a prime example of how KMF collaborates with its customers by not only controlling the entire manufacturing process, but by also being integral in the development of the final product,” Mr Leese concluded.

KMF
www.kmf.co.uk