Preventative or Reactive Maintenance?

Before we get into this, some would say my motivations are selfish with this post.  Here is where I will put that note to rest.  As an employee of a service driven company the benefit of Reactive Maintenance and revenues far out weighs the benefit of a Preventative Maintenance driven company.  Reactive Maintenance pays the bills baby.  It is usually after hours and or on the weekend, which equals to time and half for the technicians hourly rate.  If all of our customers used a Preventative Maintenance plan we would suffer financially…fortunately for us, most have no PM plan and rely soley on our 24 hour availability.  However, the customer is the most to suffer in this situation which catches me up to the present day issue,  Preventative Maintenance or Reactive Maintenance?

Let me tell you personally as both a customer and barista trainer why a PM package is so important.  BEFORE YOUR EQUIPMENT FAILS YOU IT WILL PRODUCE A COMPROMISED CUP OF COFFEE.  If you are unaware as to the warning signs of when it is time for some deeper the every day maintenance – you are serving those cups to your customers, ignorantly.

Fact:  The average customer visiting your shop 4 days a week creates an annual revenue of  $1,o40. (based on a 208 visits in a year with an average ticket of $5.)  Can you afford to serve compromised beverages?  Can you afford to not be impressive every time a new face walks through your doors?  Probably not.

BENEFITS

For one, the PM package is the checks and balances for the cafe cleaning regimen.  If a routine quarterly technician, either in shop or by hire is actively doing a check up on your equipment you are going to have a better gage on how procedures are or are not being handled.  Secondly and probably most importantly; waiting for an issue will undoubtedly mean the worst.  For a season, God knows how many drinks were served while the equipment was slowly compromising the desirable parameters of your coffee beverages!  This is crazy.  For example, water restriction due to poor or expired filtration begins to compromise coffee  and equipment in many different ways.  Excess strain on your pump and solinoids.  Build up of  undesireable mineral content in your boiler and throughout your equipment. Restricting and false water flows.  Poor water quality for a beverage that is 98% water, not a smart problem to have.  True, it’s a miniscule amount of examples to a horribly huge dilemma.   I don’t have to list them all, we know most of them.  Yet time and time again, we don’t get the service call until the machine can not pass a drop of water…you get where I’m going with this?

Here is why a Preventative Maintenance program is so entirely beneficial.  Your goal is to serve consistent and extraordinary coffee every time you serve a cup.  Of course we all have the best of intentions.  Don’t let the most preventable variables sneak up on you.  There are probably close to 25 different companies here in the greater Seattle area that can either design a PM package with or for you.  Meaning you can send in your own barista lead or technician to learn the basic tune-ups.  They will charge a one time fee to educate.  Most of the time you can even call in during the process and have them guide you back through what will take a few “hands on” experiences to master.  If you have a “engineers mind” or are an engineer it will be the most fun you have ever had.  Your new skill set will have you preventing problems and inventing new ones :).  The other way to incorporate the program is to pay for one.  To hire one of those 25 companies to check up on your water filters, pumps, gaskets, grinders etc.  Just to check that things are working in tip top shape and also giving you the kind of input that lets you know your 120 gallons away from a 20% effective water filter.  (It’s just an easy example).  Or your burrs are at 500 pounds of usage, defining the results depending on the grinder and giving you the option of replacing them before they hit 800- 1200 pounds-when they don’t do a damn thing consistently except heat up the coffee and create irregular grind sizes.

Sales men sell you equipment.  The good ones tell you the truth about maintenance.  The ignorant ones read the box and believe the advertising.  The jerks…well they inflate the usage, make light of the details and hardly know your needs.  PM packages work well with all three types of sales people.

In a world of temperature controlled,  pressure surfing, water supplementing, modified grinders with fans, fantastically sourced coffees with delicate tendencies; do we really still have the issues of dirty machines resulting in preventable breakdowns.  How about this, if you are the dude or gal who still needs the red light to go on, telling you it’s time to get fuel…you need a preventative maintenance package.