Roasting Plant® Coffee Company. Ingenuity in Every Cup.

Mike Caswell, an industrial engineer and former Starbucks executive, dreamed of bringing new levels of freshness and choice to coffee lovers. Based on experience, he knew this would require consolidating every aspect of coffee-making under one roof. His novel idea was to transport beans throughout a coffee store via a labyrinth of clear tubes and pneumatic pressure, sending raw green beans to the roaster, roasted beans to holding chambers, and small amounts of precisely measured roasted beans to Swiss-made brewers for grinding and brewing. With mounds of ingenuity and a proven, patented system called Roasting Plant Javabot™, Caswell’s vision has come to life. The first Roasting Plant location opened in Manhattan in April 2007, and it is a major success—another larger store in Greenwich Village is about to open, and others are under development. Customer response has been effusive, with many people claiming that it's the best cup of coffee they've ever had.

But success in the ultra-competitive coffee market calls for more than just a great concept: it requires stellar branding and low-cost operations to maintain profitability despite low margins. “Our goal from the beginning has been to create an out-of-this-world experience for coffee lovers, but our business sense is unquestionably down to earth. We use Apple technology to boost customer loyalty, improve productivity and employee morale, and maintain reliable, low-cost operations,” says Caswell. His company wields the Mac to reinforce branding and automate the front-end retail side of operations, as well as to streamline back-end business processes.

Ingenuity from front to back

Caswell is no stranger to innovation. To his friends’ amusement, he built the prototype of Javabot by tinkering with disassembled vacuum cleaner parts in his basement. The resulting technology delivers regular coffee or specialty espresso drinks by the cup, crafted of single bean types or blends, caffeinated or decaffeinated, or a mix of each—to any customer's specification. With Javabot, customers have their choice of just-roasted beans—say, one part Guatemala, one part New Guinea, and one part Longberry—all automatically blended and delivered in less than 30 seconds. The customized cup, due to a high level of automation, can be sold at a reasonable price.

Caswell wanted to bring the same level of ingenuity and efficiency to his business operations—something he has accomplished with the Mac. When customers first enter the Roasting Plant Coffee Company, they see digital signage run by Mac minis and soon to be using specialized, third-party Nanonation software. Vivid, engaging, and customizable on the fly, the signage is used for displaying video content with tailored messages to draw in customers. The store menu is splashed across two sleek 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, offering an array of choices.

Employees use Apple Cinema Displays that have been converted to touch screens and a small swipe card reader to enter customer orders using a customized retail point-of-sale system, capable of easily handling Roasting Plant’s unheard-of variety of offerings—infinite variations of coffee beans and types of milk.

The Mac not only makes customer interactions more efficient, but also helps stamp the Roasting Plant brand firmly into the minds of customers and creates a welcoming atmosphere, including mood music piped throughout the store and controlled by iTunes. “As a coffee house, we participate in the high point of our customers’ days, whether they are just starting out in the morning, having 10 minutes of sanity during their afternoon break, or meeting a friend after a hard day’s work. Our association with Apple portrays a smart, hip, cutting-edge brand that substantially enhances the overall customer experience,” says Caswell.