Jolly Good Software

WORM has enabled Vivace to secure external contracts to roast, essentially doubling their weekly output and improving the economics of running a roaster. They have met all their Food Safety requirements (HACCP), and can track a 250 gram bag of coffee back to all its source raw beans. This has allowed them to gain both international and national roasting contracts and triple their weekly roasting volumes.

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When an account manager arrives on site, WORM requires them to ask ten random questions from a list of around 40. If they find an issue, they can log a job for the technician to fix, either urgently or during the next technical visit (they can see when this is scheduled). Every week, Bernard and Sam (the roaster) sit down and tweak the blends. Every new shipment of beans has slightly differing flavours, so the quantities of each origin in each blend are manipulated to ensure the customer gets the same taste every time.

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Vivace were an early adopter of the Jolly Good interface, and during their implementation we learned a lot about which aspects of the interface worked well and which ones didn't. Jolly Good really appreciate their support both then and now.

The Journey

The journey started by managing the account managers' regular visits to cafés, and by ensuring that there was a high level of quality control. Each café is assigned an account manager and a call cycle frequency: some are weekly, some fortnightly, some monthly, and some remote cafés have a six-weekly cycle.

The account managers have an iPad: they walk into the café, click the Perform Site Visit button and then answer the questions.

 

On top of the account manager visit, Vivace also send a technician around to perform preventive maintenance on the coffee machine. This is also managed in a call cycle.

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Back in the roasting house, some sacks of raw beans have turned up, and are checked, weighed and tagged; the statistics are then loaded into WORM. The specific quantities for each blend are tweaked, and the volume to roast is calculated by the system, taking into account evaporation losses. As a roast is performed, the roaster enters critical information into the iPad, recording the details of the roast. The individual roasts are then blended and bagged according to the specifications in WORM;  for example, 30x1 kilo bags, 20x250 gram bags, and so on.

Vivace Espresso is a coffee roasting house and a café. Bernard Smith is the Master Roaster: he started Vivace in 1997. As with all new businesses, they started small and have now grown to be what they are today. Bernard teamed up with Paul Baker, who came from a brewing background, and together they have grown the company in many different areas.

Paul is very customer-focused, and wanted to ensure that no matter which café you bought a Vivace coffee from, it would be good, very good. To achieve that goal, they have a team constantly visiting all the cafés that sell their blends, checking, tasting and training.

 

The early bird catches the worm, and Vivace wanted to be the early bird, so they called their Jolly Good system WORM. The Vivace team are experts at roasting, blending and bagging coffee, so Paul set about getting some contracts to roast beans for other companies. This meant receiving and storing someone else's raw beans, doing the roasting for them and tracking the details of the roast. It also, very importantly, meant being able to track any bag of coffee back to all its sources.