In today's fast-paced coffee industry, consistency and quality are essential for cafés aiming to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Flow Coffee Telemetry is revolutionizing how coffee professionals monitor and improve their drinks, empowering baristas and coffee shop owners with data-driven insights that enhance the coffee they serve.
The Flow Dashboard: Real-Time Insights
At the heart of Flow's offering is a web-based dashboard, which provides up-to-the-minute data accessible to baristas and café teams. This feature allows you to monitor barista shot performance across multiple shop locations, helping identify which cafés may require additional support. By showcasing whether the baseline recipes are being followed, the dashboard ensures that every customer receives a high-quality drink with every order.
Additionally, the dashboard highlights shot trends, making it easy to identify peak service times that pose challenges for staff while pinpointing areas in need of training.
The Barista Feedback display scores each shot as perfect, okay, or problematic (too fast or slow). If displayed where the team can see, this display can give real-time evaluation that provides valuable insights, allowing baristas to adjust their techniques instantly. Thanks to the Leaderboard feature, they can easily compare performance with other baristas in the shop, facilitating ongoing improvements and accountability.
Low Maintenance, High Efficiency: The Flow Gateway
The Flow Gateway offers easy plug-and-play installation and requires minimal maintenance. Its compact design allows it to be placed near coffee machines, and its Wi-Fi connectivity eliminates the need for networking cables.
Training and Support for Baristas
Flow Coffee Telemetry is more than a monitoring tool; it also enhances staff training. With real-time data, shop owners can provide targeted training based on specific challenges identified through the FLOW Dashboard. This leads to more effective onboarding for new staff and ongoing development for existing team members.
Ensuring Quality Across Wholesale Accounts
For roasters, maintaining consistency across wholesale accounts is crucial. Flow helps cafés brew to a roaster’s recipe and specifications, ensuring that the quality of the coffee served aligns with brand standards — even when sold wholesale. By providing actionable insights, roasters can effectively support their clients, leading to stronger relationships and increased loyalty.
The Impact on Customer Satisfaction and Business Growth
Customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of any successful coffee business. With Flow's insights, cafés can ensure that every cup served is high quality. This level of reliability fosters customer loyalty, encouraging repeat visits and driving sales growth. The FLOW team has observed that when a location improves by just 20%, sales volume increases by 12-15%.
Metric: A Flow Case Study
Our friends at Metric — a coffee shop and roastery in Chicago, IL — have been using Flow this year, and it didn’t take long for them to notice significant improvements after getting the system up and running. By having data on various factors that affect espresso-making, they’ve been able to increase shot consistency across their team — even during rush hours, as the iPad setup and app help keep baristas aware of each shot they pull.
They’re also planning to use it as a training tool, allowing new baristas to visually reinforce and track their progress, letting them know when they’re pulling a shot that meets Metric’s standards. Flow will also assist the team in adjusting to any new equipment added to the café, as it works on any volumetric machine with flow meters. Using the data it provides, baristas can make real-time adjustments to ensure each customer enjoys consistent and delicious drinks. Flow helps cafés not only meet but exceed customer expectations. As the coffee landscape continues to evolve, embracing such innovative solutions will be essential for building a loyal customer base and ensuring long-term success.
