GCR explores the evolution of automatic technology in the coffee industry and how companies across the supply chain are utilising innovations in the field.
From the alarm that wakes you up in the morning to brushing your teeth before bed, automation is now ingrained into our daily lives. The same goes for the coffee industry, in which many companies are utilising the constantly evolving technology to streamline their operations and create solutions to everyday issues.
Over the past five years, the advancement and adoption of automatic equipment in the coffee world has ramped up. Multiple factors are influencing this growth, including global skilled-labour shortages, increased focus on quality, and heightened interest in new markets such as China.
However, according to Coffee Strategist Jamie Treby – who’s worked in the sector for more than 20 years and now offers guidance to roasters in his role at green-bean specialist DRWakefield – this fast-paced adoption of automation is nothing new.
“I think the interest and adoption of automation is cyclical. When I started in coffee in the late 1990s, automation was everywhere, but then the industry pushed back against it and the focus turned to craft and skill,” says Treby.
“It’s been interesting to see it start to gather momentum again over the past few years. It has definitely improved since the last cycle and the emphasis is now on precision and quality.”
Automation is finding its way into all areas of the supply chain, but one that’s most prominent is the last step: when the beans reach the cup. As more people around the world show an interest in the quality of the coffee they’re drinking, super automatic machines are making it more accessible to more people.
Cafés are no longer the principal source of good coffee, with convenience stores, petrol stations, leisure venues, and more able to produce quality drinks without the need for a barista. Yet, it’s not just alternative coffee venues adopting the technology. Many coffee shops are trading in their traditional machines for automatic versions that can do everything from grind to brew to steam.
Will Kenney, Commercial Director of 200 Degrees Coffee, says the 21-strong group of cafés across the United Kingdom has embraced automation to help improve its operations.
“For many years, we had a standard bar set-up at our venues, with a three-group traditional machine and three grinders,” says Kenney.
“The move towards automation was actually inspired by the wholesale side of the business. There were a lot of workplaces that wanted to serve 200 Degrees beans and we needed a straightforward and consistent solution to brew the coffee well without a barista.”
The team started experimenting with different automated machines and discovered that the gap between a fully automated or bean-to-cup machine and traditional espresso machine had become much narrower as the technology improved. Inspired by their positive findings and the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, they started implementing automatic technology in their shops.
“At first, we were looking for quick wins to improve consistency, so we introduced the PUQpress [an automatic coffee tamper]. Next, we focused on workflow and updated our grinders to grind-by-weight models. We anticipated there could be some resistance from the baristas, but everyone soon realised they were dialling in quicker, wasting less coffee, and pulling tasty shots more consistently,” he says.
“Once we had also introduced technology to help with milk steaming and Flow telemetry systems to monitor what was happening remotely, we were in a situation where we had coffee teams who were very comfortable using automated technology and seeing the benefits on each shift.”
Kenney says all these pieces of equipment helped streamline workflow, made the coffee more consistent, and reduced the pressure and physical strain on the baristas. When it came to the point when one of its out-of-town shopping centre venues needed additional capacity, 200 Degrees was ready to introduce a fully automatic machine alongside the traditional to cope with the increased demand.
“We didn’t make a big fanfare about it. To be honest, we expected regulars customers to come in and say they preferred their coffee made on a traditional machine, but that wasn’t the case,” he says.
“Our shopping-centre locations experience huge volumes of customers that generally have a shorter dwell time than our city-centre shops. To cope with the increased drinks numbers we’ve begun installing two super automatic machines in each, which have been hugely helpful with the current challenges around labour costs and recruitment.”
With a barista-school wing of the business, Kenney says 200 Degrees Coffee will always have some traditional machines among its ranks.
“If I sit at a table at one of our shops that uses both traditional and automatic machines and order via our app, I wouldn’t be able to tell which machine produced the coffee. We’ll always have traditional machines to help train the next generation of baristas and support our wholesale partners, but we also see huge benefits of adopting automatic technologies,” he says.
Behind the scenes, automation is also being employed by other players in the supply chain. At the roastery, roasters are using software that can replicate their roast profiles to exacting standards to improve consistency, efficiency, and profitability. Key parameters such as temperature, drum speed, and airflow can be standardised to remove the risk of human error and reduce the workload of the roasters.
Treby, who started the roasting era of his career in 2003 at Starbucks, says this technology is changing the way people roast dramatically.
“When I started out as a roaster, we used a calculator and paper to manually work out the rate of rise and had to constantly keep score of it. Now, people roast via a curve on a screen,” he says.
“There’s a risk that roasting in this manner relies too heavily on the figures and users may lack the basic understanding of what’s going on. However, I don’t think the art of roasting will ever be lost. I think there will be a differentiation between craft and very good assimilation, but there’s room for both.”
On a more basic level, automation is also being adopted in large roasteries to make the work of the roaster less strenuous on the body.
“We used to have to do all the back-breaking work ourselves, such as lugging sacks of coffee beans around. Now, there are automatic loading systems and packing machines that make the work much more manageable,” he says.
Working closely with producers across the world, Treby says the development of automatic technology to benefit farmers at origin has been slower than other areas of the industry. Though one element that has seen innovation is green bean analysis.
“It’s very early days, but technology that uses AI to help grade green beans is starting to emerge. There’s always been multi-purpose machines that measure variables such as density and water content, but they’ve always been one machine for each job – now they are combining them,” he says.
“These machines can analyse different chemicals and some are even starting to look at organic volatile compounds to determine precursors of different flavours.”
Despite the emergence of this technology, Treby questions how it will work in line with the Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement that prioritises “the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilisation of genetic resources”.
“The protocol means that you’re not allowed to exploit a product from another country without that country’s permission. I suspect this could be a large hurdle for this technology, especially if big companies that must comply with the law are to adopt it,” he says.
Another area at origin that could benefit from automation is coffee picking. The rising age of coffee farmers is becoming an international issue, as fewer children of traditional farming families are staying in the industry.
“Farmers are getting older and older, and their children have been afforded the opportunity to study at university or move away, so fewer are continuing in the family business of coffee,” says Treby.
“If we’re still going to produce coffee at the levels that we currently are, automation is going to need to play a role on the farm.”
Treby points to Brazil as an example of a growing region that’s already started to adopt machine harvesting.
“Some people look down on Brazil’s use of machinery, which is utter nonsense – it’s a different way of doing things. There’s an assumption that because it’s automated it’s bad, but often people that think this way don’t have a problem with machine roasting,” he says.
“The challenge with mechanical picking is that you’re going to have beans at different stages of ripeness, and you won’t be able to select the ones that are just right. You’ve got to understand exactly when the right time is to pick that entire field to maximize the value you get out of it. This means a lot more will have to be invested in sorting.”
Another issue with much of the mechanical picking technology is that it requires flatter land and straight rows of coffee trees. There’s also the question of cost.
“Many small-scale farmers can’t afford to replant their crops, let alone purchase some of this technology,” says Treby
“However, I think because of the shortage of pickers, automation is going to have to play a part of this process in the future. A farmer we work with in Brazil has started using drones to fertilise his crops and access the fields – it’s fascinating.”
Whether the recent boom in automation is part of a cycle or is indeed here to stay, it appears there’s plenty of room for continued innovation in all links of the supply chain.
This article was first published in the November/December 2024 edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.
