Automatic Merchandiser - 40

our options, and we carry a significant
number of creamer flavors. We sell more
French Vanilla than we do regular halfand-half."
In addition to expansive coffee options, water filtration and ice
machines, Coffee Ambassador also
offers teas, sodas and snacks through
pantry service. Smalley said that if a
customer requests a particular product,
she'll find a way to provide it to them.
"With pantry items or extra items
that they may need, if we don't carry
it, I'll source it and find a way to get it,"
she said. "Even if that means carrying
two to three cases in the warehouse for
that one customer, then we'll do that.
The new craze is that La Croix water.
We had clients request it, so we started
carrying it. Another client wanted
a certain type of crackers, or water
bottles with special caps on them, or
a decaf tea that we can't get through
Vistar, so I found a way to buy directly
from Bigelow. We don't carry a lot
of pantry items like a micro market
would, but if they need something,
we'll give them what they want."
Curtis said they analyze the costeffectiveness of particular products
to ensure they make sense for each
account.
"We're improving on the whole
coffee experience, but the caveat for us
as an OCS operator is the cost," he said.
"The big, dramatic change [in the industry] is the bean-to-cup demand. That
would be like de jong DUKE, Avalon,
these larger units in which you put the
whole beans in, activate the machine to
grind the beans, dose them and make
a coffee or Caffé Americano. The units
have a mixture of powdered milk so you
can also make a cappuccino or a latte.
These machines are considerably more
expensive, so we have to make sure that
we get what we call 'the right fit' clients,
where there's enough people and there's
enough demand to support the economics of the business model."
Curtis said that his colleagues in
Canada and U.S. cities such as Los
40

Automatic Merchandiser * September 2019

Curtis leads a tasting in the Nespresso tasting room at Coffee Ambassador.

Angeles, San Francisco and New York
City initially sparked this trend, and
it's now migrated to other areas of the
country. He noted that prospective
clients often approach Coffee Ambassador after seeing a bean-to-cup setup
in another client's office, showing an
increasing interest in high-quality coffee in the workplace.
TRAINING, TECH AND TRUST

Curtis and Smalley oversee 35 employees at Coffee Ambassador, and training
is very important to the company culture. Coffee Ambassador does general
training based on the CX "customer
experience" model, and they also hold
product-specific trainings with their
supplier partners as needed.
"We hear from a lot of our vendor
partners that we really focus on training,'" Curtis said. "It's important. The
way I look at it, besides the coffee, our
most valuable resource is our human
resource. Yeah, we're in the coffee
business, but we're also in the service
business, and that means having
happy people out in the field representing the company. Training also
helps build confidence - you build
excitement, you improve morale, and
people feel engaged."
Training is also important as
technological advances continue to
generate new equipment for making
coffee and running business operations. Smalley said that Coffee Ambassador has been using Smart Service
in conjunction with QuickBooks, and
iFleet to communicate with service
technicians, salespeople, and customer
service representatives.
"We've outgrown QuickBooks,
if you can believe that, so we are
now embarking upon upgrading to

NetSuite," she explained. "It's going to
be a bear - I've been through three
upgrades, and it's not fun - but it's
better than crashing. You know how
technology changes; in two or three
years, it's outdated. So you really need
to keep up with it."
Curtis said that he foresees more
technological advances affecting the
OCS segment, particularly with telemetry and touchscreens.
"Everything is getting more
sophisticated - it's like the computer
industry - it's amazing how things
change," he said. "For us, our key's got
to be keeping close to our customer's
needs. If something pops up in the
marketplace that we haven't seen, we
need to address it quickly and see if it's
right for us."
"It's great that you can do stuff
online, especially for marketing purposes or if you need to disseminate
information," he continued. "But at the
end of the day, coffee is about the taste,
the smell, the tactile experience."
Both Curtis and Smalley enjoy
working with their team, with the
many different clients they've worked
with over the past three decades, and
with each other.
"I really like the variety of all the
different things I get to do as CEO,"
Curtis said. "I'm always putting on different hats, but at the end of the day it
all comes back to driving that customer
experience. I enjoy the people - our
staff and our customers."
"The nice thing about being with
your family is that there's a high amount
of trust," Smalley added. "One of our
mantras is, do what you say you're
going to do. That's really important. The
key thing for us is the people. People are
the bloodline of the company." ■

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