If you are in Toronto, we are inviting you to a whole new way to secure great coffee, great equipment and great prices for your office coffee. Our new showroom at 130 North Queen Street (Close to Sherway) has over 7300 square feet of equipment, a service centre, coffee and supplies for you to choose from for your home or office. Looking to upgrade your current supplier, try something new, or completely eliminate the cost involved with office coffee, pop by and try out our machines, (all of which are working) and let us show you a new way of offering your team great coffee and espresso while saving you money.
What is different about our offerings?
It is no mystery that the coffee world has changed over the last 10 years, with specialty coffee becoming more and more important to the daily lives of those working in the office or in the new hybrid/work from home world. Yet the traditional model of coffee service has remained somewhat the same for the last 40 years. Can you imagine any other industry remaining the same from 1983?
The old model worked as follows:
1. The office does not want to deal with coffee and breakroom supplies for the staff, so they call an office coffee service provider.
2. The office coffee company provides equipment for free (or nominal charge), maintenance, service and delivery to the office on a scheduled delivery basis.
3. The cost for that service (free equipment) is built into the price of the goods you purchase.
4. You are on a contract to meet a minimum.
This is a basic model, but one you are all familiar with. But lets look at what has changed in the last 40 years.
Costco, Amazon, Office Supply stores, cell phones, price shopping, new equipment, environmental factors, price of gas, delivery fees, route management technology, same day delivery, next day delivery, new technology in dairy products, new coffee products to name a few. And add in the new one over the last three years...HYBRID or WORK FROM HOME!
So how does the old model work in this scenario? It doesn't unless you are willing to pay higher prices. And here is why.
First you can price shop like never before, so that inflated price is easily comparable. Second, the office coffee provider can no longer count on the number of staff working each day to offset the cost of equipment. The HYBRID model means that although an office may have 50 people, likely 10-30 are not there everyday. Not to mention the cost of delivery, gas, etc makes it harder for office coffee companies to compete. It is increasingly harder for office coffee companies to estimate a time frame for their return on investment in equipment.
So Neil, what is the solution?
Granted this is self serving, but you dont have to work with ECS Coffee to figure this out. With new technology in equipment, commercial coffee machines are pretty reliable and dont require as much service as they did 40 years ago. And with the internet you can definitely save money on supplies. So the new model is really about what you are willing to pay, and how much work you want to do .
If you are comfortable and can afford it, the best solution is the traditional office coffee way. This gives total ownership to the supplier to manage your equipment, inventory, and coffee program. It comes at a cost, but the piece of mind can be worth it. Just keep an eye out for additional "new" charges that find their way into your invoice.
If you want an alternative, then consider buying or renting equipment. At ECS, we no longer provide free equipment unless the customer is of a pretty large size. Instead, we rent or sell all of our equipment at a cost that makes sense to the client and to us. . And then the real savings come in. We have created two ways for customers to purchase supplies from us. The first and lowest cost puts all the work on the customer. They login to a secure part of our website and order their supplies, which we then ship via courier nationwide. The prices include additional discounts, terms, loyalty points and monthly specials. This is what we call Corporate Coffee. The second is through a set price list for all our customers. This means the customer can have us pop by and write their order, they can email or call us and we will do the legwork of invoicing and delivering to them. The prices are higher than our website since we are doing the work, but they are much lower than most office coffee providers. This is called Office Coffee.
And in both scenarios there are NO HIDDEN FEES! It is completely transparent.
So pop by, grab a coffee on us and have a look at some great options for your office or home!