It can be a great way to start your morning, or a welcome pick-me-up when the dreaded afternoon slump hits. With coffee consumption steadily growing, many of us thrive off coffee.
Starting in Queensland 10 years ago, Campos Coffee runs a complex business that doesn't only revolve around coffee; they also fix commercial espresso machines. Today, they boast seven flagship Campos Coffee cafes, roasteries in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and a wide network of partner cafes across Australia.
"Quality coffee cultivated by good" is a simple phrase that forms the foundation of what Campos Coffee does. At a consumer level, this means providing retail customers quality coffee. At a producer level, they help farmers out of commodity cycle into the speciality cycle so that farmers get paid a fair price.
The socially-conscious coffee company provides much more than coffee. They invest in all the communities they operate in through their many social initiatives ranging from funding Open Heart – a program that sends Australian heart surgeons to Rwanda to perform lifesaving operations on children, to supporting schools in Papua New Guinea and El Salvador.
Their primary goal is to source the best specialty coffee they can. "It's easier to say where we don't source our coffee beans from," jokes John. Their beans come from a diverse list of suppliers including Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea.
As they supply coffee to cafes and espresso bars throughout Australia, the complexity of running a coffee business was a strong incentive to get a powerful inventory management system. "We have different lines of coffee from all over the world. It's seasonal so it's constantly changing," explains John.
For Campos Coffee, it was paramount they develop a relationship with their producers. "With coffee in particular, traceability is vital," explains John. Some producers they've worked with, in Papua New Guinea for instance, they've known for over 10 years. "Campus Coffee is able to help them in their production, from picking, processing, maintaining logistics once it lands in the roasting facility in Brisbane," says John. By the time it reaches the end-consumer, they've had a hand in the entire process.
As most businesses do in the beginning, Campos Coffee was using multiple spreadsheets to track their inventory. They soon realised it was cumbersome and fraught with errors. "The amount of time and labour that was taken up by doing inventory count was eating into production time," gripes John.
They made the move to Unleashed two years ago and their inventory management has improved significantly. "We've seen a 30% reduction in time taken to manage our inventory and inventory systems," says John. The powerful nature of Unleashed's inventory tracking means it easily handles all facets of their business, whether it's tracking coffee at the roasteries, or equipment needed to service coffee machines.
Unleashed's real-time reporting means that different parts of the business can track inventory at any time. Their partner manager can track what coffee beans are scheduled for production, and their machine servicing department can see what parts are needed for upcoming jobs and what needs to be put on backorder. This allows Campos Coffee to only produce and hold the stock they need.
The ability to access their inventory information remotely is vital. "I'm very rarely here in the office so that's particularly important to me," explains John. They can be in the middle of a farm in Kenya and still be able to see how their business is doing without any difficulty.
With Unleashed's efficient inventory benefits, staff at Campos Coffee now spends less time entering data into multiple spreadsheets and more time doing their job, whether it's training baristas or roasting coffee.