At the end of last month, we received a particularly interesting customer, a young couple from Yunnan. They came to the door with their own roasted Yunnan small-grain coffee and asked: "Our workshop now relies entirely on manual bagging, and can only pack 200 bags a day. Can we use your small coffee packaging machine to transform it? As for the budget...it''s best not to exceed our half-year turnover." This sounds like a fantasy, but looking at the videos on their mobile phones that were still sealing at three in the morning, our technical department held a meeting overnight.
To be honest, we have seen many boutique coffee workshops like this. Most of the bosses are coffee enthusiasts, and the equipment budget may not be as expensive as an imported grinder. But this time we wanted to try something different - disassemble and reassemble the modular packaging unit used for large factories, and after three weeks, we assembled a "Transformers version" small coffee packaging machine for them.
The secret of this equipment is the detachable hopper and heat sealing head. The boss''s wife likes to change different flavors of coffee beans every day, so we installed a magnetic suction hopper on the machine, which is more convenient to change flavors than changing coffee filter cups. The most amazing thing is the heat sealing module. The fancy edge sealing that originally required a custom mold can now be assembled into six shapes such as hearts and leaves using the Lego-style components that their children play with. When I visited him again last week, the boss excitedly said that the daily output has tripled, and the packaging bags can also play monthly theme designs. The surrounding coffee shops are rushing to place orders.
We racked our brains on cost control. Considering that the workshop has just started, we suggested using a second-hand equipment renovation plan - disassemble and reassemble the display machine that the customer returned, retain the core transmission structure, and replace it with a new touch screen. This modification cost saves nearly 60% compared to a new machine, but the performance is not discounted at all. When they attended the market at the end of last month, the small coffee packaging machine with traces of use but flashing a new blue screen became a live advertisement for the brand story.
Recently, the busiest corner of the workshop is always the "coffee packaging blind box machine" that is being tested. This is a new model developed by us inspired by customers, specifically for small-batch and multi-variety boutique coffee workshops. The machine can memorize 20 packaging parameters, and switching products is as simple as choosing a mobile phone theme. Last week, when installing the machine for a customer in Hangzhou who focuses on the concept of a coffee laboratory, they even used this small coffee packaging machine to play on-site customization-the customer scans the code to select the packaging pattern, and the machine prints and packages in real time, turning the packaging process into a consumer experience.
Of course, low-cost transformation is not a compromise. We have left upgrade interfaces for all modified equipment, such as the second-hand refurbished machine installed in the Pu''er workshop at the beginning of the year, and the nitrogen replacement module was added last month. The lady boss was so happy on the phone: "Now when we send ear bags to customers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, we no longer have to worry about moisture on the road, and the customer complaint rate has dropped to zero!"
After working in this industry for a long time, you will find that the packaging upgrade of boutique coffee workshops is like making hand-brewed coffee - a difference of one degree in water temperature and a delay of one second in water injection will affect the flavor. What our small coffee packaging machine has to do is to be a smart hand-brewed pot: it retains the temperature of manual work and injects the precision of automation. Next time if you pass by those alley workshops with the aroma of coffee, maybe the packaging machine with a warm light flashing by the window is working silently with the ingenuity of our workshop?
