In an era where competition is high and information is key to unlocking business success, a partnership with consultant Highpresso is key to positioning brands into the marketplace of tomorrow.
When clients approach Highpresso for the first time with an idea of what they’d like to conceive, quite often they aren’t sure how to achieve it.
What they soon learn from working closely with the innovation and strategic management consultant, is that there are many opportunities to grow their brand by implementing new technologies and utilising data-driven strategies in a way that suits their vision.
“We assist clients on their innovation journey, all the way from building strategy and implementation roadmaps, to executing strategy, and commercialising novel processes and products,” says Highpresso Founder and Managing Director Adam Carr.
“What we like doing best is understanding the unique value proposition a company offers to its customers, and working alongside marketing, operations and research and product development to craft solutions and products that engage the marketplace of tomorrow.”
Since 2016, Highpresso has delivered a range of services to market, including competitor analysis and product benchmarking for dairy products, sustainability programs and strategy to government bodies, and product development for a new generation of coffee machines.
What binds all projects together, is the requirement to innovate in a way that is scalable and meaningful for each brand.
Highpresso has worked with many future-focused clients across multiple countries. It works with equipment manufacturers in Europe and the United Kingdom, distributors in Australia and the United
States, and global quick service restaurants and local government bodies to add vision and value to their portfolios. It has also developed contract manufacturing solutions for roasters and small distilleries.
“Some of the work we’re doing currently includes developing onboarding processes and implementation execution using telemetry systems, building new grinding and extraction systems for the domestic market, and assisting global manufacturers with product development and delivery,” Carr says. “We’ve also been assisting Australian government bodies in building scalable carbon reduction programs with a focus on building value for cafés, while tracking their carbon footprint reduction.
“We are building the future with clients who want to innovate and sustainably scale their innovations.”
Adaptation is Highpresso’s forte. The company predicts significant industry changes in the domestic and commercial markets over the next five years, and wants to help businesses adapt and thrive.
One such method is through modernising systems and processes at a café level through telemetry. Carr says there are multiple products on the market that can monitor how well a café is extracting coffee, and technology that shows users in-depth time-resolved data on every shot.
But how can this be integrated with existing systems and processes? What does a business need to change see the benefits of the new technologies? Carr says understanding the value of the information and implementing change in businesses to get the most from new technology is what Highpresso strives to deliver.
“It’s worth distinguishing between information and data. One can have an awful lot of data and still not have any information available to help understand what the next steps should be. The person with the most doesn’t necessarily win,” he says.
“That said, an awful lot of information can be gleaned from the right kind of data. A simple shot tracker can be used to count shots, forecast filter, and grinder burr changes.”
Accumulate this data in the right way, and one can start to visualise seasonality trends, the impact of different times of day to quality of service, even the way a simple blend tweak will impact the service life of a grinder fleet. Data can also be used to see when an operator is busy or not, which facilitates a better relationship with the customer by not interrupting during demanding hours.
“Understanding these trends, and eventually being able to forecast them, can change the way one does business. Opportunities begin to present themselves, such as remote training services, asset management and facilitating sale subscriptions to wholesale based on real-time feedback,” Carr says.
Highpresso is working with businesses to rollout such technologies and help them see the value on a broad scale.
“We want businesses to capture the right data, feed the right information back to the relevant stakeholders, and help build out further capability that technologies can enable,” Carr says.
While telemetry and automated tools can be highly effective if adopted appropriately, Carr says its value is determined by what each brand prioritises, and how the tool is implemented. And that’s where Highpresso is ready to help.
For example, if a roaster is focused primarily on quality, but has a desire to grow sales, Highpresso will help design a pathway focused on rapid expansion, but one that doesn’t compromise on taste.
“Being able to scale-up this quality is difficult without either having an army of trainers, or a way of measuring that quality remotely, processing the data, and succinctly reporting that back to the stakeholders in the business,” Carr says.
He says while roasters are well versed in this former method, Highpresso is well versed in the latter, which Carr believes is the more scalable approach.
“Our team is connected to a global network of manufacturers, engineers, and suppliers. We partner with global operators that we trust to deliver high quality outcomes, no matter the country,” he says.
“We believe we can connect like-minded partners to deliver an innovation portfolio tailored to each roaster and manufacturer that wants to make a true impact on the future.”
Highpresso is optimistic about the impact it can have, but its greatest challenge, will be benchmarking, integrating, and scaling automated and automatable tools and data within each customer’s chosen business specialty.
“Processing vast amounts of data to generate meaningful business insights will require expertise in not only the handling of that data, but how to transform it, and then drive meaningful change within the business,” Carr says.
“We feel prepared for this challenge, and prepared to help roasters and the broader industry thrive with the changes that are to come.”
Carr says such changes in this post-pandemic world include an out-of-home market that is stagnant or in decline, and a workforce with reduced skills, while growing at-home coffee solutions that deliver the café quality people expect.
“A wave of new technology is certainly coming that promises to automate and deliver all the data roasters and café owners need. [The key will be] how we integrate these technologies in a way that delivers both value and simplicity to our clients, and in a way that helps them deliver their values into the marketplace,” he says.
As the market evolves, Highpresso is committed to evolving with it. Its ultimate goal is to help roasters and manufacturers find their future.
“We are facilitators of change, from helping bring out the first idea, to building the first prototype, to deploying new technology across a business globally,” Carr says. “We would love to help businesses big, or small, in achieving their vision.”
For more information, visit www.highpresso.com
This article was first published in the March/April 2023 edition of Global Coffee Report.