TEA AND COFFEE

er-facing apps are ones which let the customer purchase coffee or tea directly, whether for shipment or the conve- nience of having an order prepared before you walk into the café. The CUPS app (also free), based in and made for coffee consumers in New York City, offers prepaid plans for the city's best independent coffee shops. With them, shop-goers choose a coffee shop on the app from the city's many par- ticipating locations, choose what drink they would like and show the code pro- duced to the cashier (assuming a plan has already been purchased). The plans, which can be purchased in "Basic" and "Advanced" packages, can save the con- sumer up to 40 percent on coffee, as well as introduces them to local independent coffeehouses. Starbucks: Mobile App King While it is not the only coffee company to offer a mobile payment program, Seattle, Wash.-based Starbucks arguably stands out as being the most successful when it comes to providing digital customer convenience and increasing profits. Initially, customers could use the app to pay quickly for their orders in store with a wave of their phones in a similar fashion as the CUPS app, and the MIT Technology Review reported that 12 million active users were paying for their orders in this manner at the beginning of last year. After a successful trial run in Portland, Ore., the com- pany launched a mobile payment feature in June, allowing custom- ers to place orders on their phones, skip the store lines and pick up their orders immediately upon entering the store. This further convenience contribut- ed to a record-breaking fiscal first quarter in 2016, with revenue increasing for the company 12 percent to a record USD $5.4 billion. During the Q1 2016 earnings call, Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz lauded the company for its strongest holiday season yet, and he recognized the role of technology in its growth. "Technology innovation is further strengthening our brand, improving our efficiency and in-store execution, increasing our prof- itability and most importantly, enabling us to deliver an elevated Starbucks expe- rience to our customers, particularly to Millennials," he said. During the call, COO Kevin Johnson reported that the Starbuck's mobile rewards app, a "profit driver of its own," now has 11.1 million customers in the U.S., a 23 percent increase over Q1 2015. "In the quarter, over 21 percent of total U.S. transactions were paid using the mobile apps with December accelerating to 22 percent, and we are seeing further acceleration in the month of January," Johnson said. "Over one mil- lion customers in the U.S. used our Mobile Order & Pay capability in the month of December and those customers averaged approximately five mobile orders in the month, driving meaning- ful revenue growth and incrementality." Johnson noted that there is continued growth in the company's My Starbucks Rewards loyalty program around the world, adding, "The use of Mobile Order & Pay is growing and we are now process- ing over 6 million mobile order and pay transactions per month." Going forward, Starbucks will be expanding its digital media platform in several key ways, one of which is the ability to place orders on the mobile app and have them delivered to the user's location, an endeavor the company is piloting in Seattle, Wash., and New York City, N.Y. Apps for Roasters While there are boundless consumer-fac- ing apps, the same cannot be said for apps, whether mobile or web-based, for roasters. There are, however, a few worth paying attention to. Quality Espresso, the largest manufacturer of professional espresso equipment in Spain (it is based in Barcelona) and a worldwide leader in the industry, introduced its new M2M (machine to machine) system called the Quality Espresso Link at Host Milan. The system remotely collects and pro- vides data from its coffee machines to any Internet connected device. On a daily basis the system relays data such as the number of coffee cycles performed, when to undertake preventative mainte- nance and other information for techni- cal services to consider. The M2M system works because of GSM (Global System for Mobile com- munication) technology and a SIM card installed on the electronic machine that transmits information to a data center. From there, the information is made available to coffee roasters or owners through their computers, smartphones and tablets. Julian Melbourne, export 28 Tea & Coffee Trade Journal | www.teaandcoffee.net mobile apps COVER STORY Starbucks' mobile app allows customers to order and pay out of store, then skip the store line when they pick up their orders.

• Cover