Your buddy the barista may not be out of a job tomorrow, but he may be looking over his shoulder.
Coming up behind him is an Austin, Texas-based coffee vendor that’s attracting attention from the magazine Fast Company, but not for the nutty aroma of its Latin American-born beans.
Briggo (more about name later) recently was listed among Fast Company’s 10 Most Innovative companies in the world for crafting a self-contained, robot-staffed 10-foot by 4-foot Coffee Haus selling everything from espresso to chai latte, with no human intervention.
The latest kudos for the startup have everything to do with how technology and artificial intelligence are remaking food service as we know it.
“Technology … I think it's still really in its early stages,” said Court Williams, chief executive of HVS Executive Search, a hospitality industry consulting firm. “I don't think it's going mainstream yet. It certainly is under watch. With labor costs going up, yes, it’s definitely on the dashboard. People are looking at it.”
For certain, there’s been vending machine coffee for decades, including one that serves the familiar Nescafe brand. Some of it’s even actually drinkable.
Briggo’s founders say they’ve created a tech-centric coffee ecosystem, complete with Latin American backstory, that hits Millennial touchstones including customization and app availability.
“There's so much going on in food and automation that is enabling consumers,” said Kevin Nater, Briggo’s president and chief executive. “We're empowering people to create their perfect cup of coffee and then executing it with precision and consistency, giving them really the ultimate coffee experience with full control, remote ordering capability and consistency of execution.”
Here’s how it works: From a smartphone app or touchscreen on the Coffee Haus structure, consumers can select from 15 hot drinks including cappuccino, latte and espresso, and six cold drinks including iced coffee and iced chai. Steamed milk and gourmet syrups also are available.
The drinks come in 12-, 16- and 20-ounce cups, and can be ready in as little as two minutes depending on how busy the location is.
In lauding Briggo, Fast Company noted that “customers have full visibility into the wait times, control over the ingredients and flavorings, and the ability to customize and name their favorites, all without interacting with a human barista.”
The automated coffee shop “can produce a hundred specialty coffee drinks an hour, which we've been told competes with the three- or four-person coffee bar,” Nater said.
So what does Briggo mean for the future of coffee shop labor?
Nater does not see his operation as a threat.
“We see the consumer as wanting more control and a more consistent experience than is available in the market today in areas where ... you wouldn't build a full coffee house,” he said. “We're 40 square feet. We can present you the ability to get a great cup of coffee 24 hours a day in a very exciting way.
“The good news is that there's a rising boat for quality coffee,” he added. “So even as we come to market, the market for quality coffee is growing faster. No, I don't think in the near term we replace [humans]. We just give people access to great quality coffee where it may not exist today.”
Cofounder Chas Studor said he got the idea for Briggo years ago. After leaving a long career in microcontroller chip design, he spent three years working with non-profits, including one focused on Honduras. That got him more tuned in to coffee, from bean to cup.
And it got him focused on how selling higher quality coffee beans can help Latin American growers. The company has been working with Texas A&M on a project to help the growers improve operations, Studor said.
“I wanted to learn about specialty coffee, so I actually hired a guy that was a champion barista,” said Studor, who named the company in part after his grandfather’s former machine tool company, called Briggs.
The barista friend “was the model for the first robotic barista we made," Studor added. "And his point was, if these could be ubiquitous, then ... more people would want specialty coffee. We wouldn't replace all the specialty coffee shops. But more people would expect it so they'd be more likely to come into a barista bar. At first I wasn't sure he was going to help me, but he did because he saw that bigger picture.”
While the locations haven’t yet hit Starbucks-level ubiquity, they are growing.
Briggos are live at convention centers in Austin and Houston, at the Austin Airport and at a Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth.
The company said it recently received approval to launch a branch at the San Francisco airport. The Bay area is the home territory of Cafe X, a robotic coffee bar that already has three locations in the city.
Both brands will be represented at the airport, said spokesman Doug Yakel, who offered "tentative" launch dates.
"Briggo will be located in Terminal 3 and is shooting for a tentative Memorial Day weekend launch," he said. "Café X ... will be located at the beginning of Boarding Area E, across from the United Club, and should be in place around Labor Day weekend."
Briggo’s business model allows for “a range of possibilities, from a Briggo-owned revenue share model to a sale and licensing model,” the company said in an emailed response to questions. It declined to release revenue figures.
Both Nater and Studor noted that the company of 50 employees has created manufacturing, engineering and retails jobs in Austin, where the Coffee Haus is made, and that its head count will expand as locations increase.
“We're creating opportunities all the way back to origin,” said Nater. “So our culture is about creating opportunities from farm to cup. Empowering people to create their perfect cup of coffee and inspiring and developing each other every day. And that's what we stand for.”
