When Jacob Bunn, founder of Bunn-O-Matic Corporation (BUNN), opened his grocery store 175 years ago in Springfield, Illinois, the world was a very different place. He probably never anticipated that a good cup of coffee would become an expectation at every restaurant, hotel lobby, concert venue, and airport lounge. Nor did he probably expect that his name would come to be synonymous with delicious, heart-warming beverages. But whatever social and technological changes have occurred from the 19th century to the 21st, there’s almost nothing better than a good cup of coffee.
The simple pleasure of a cup of coffee has grown incredibly complex over the years and BUNN now caters to a new generation of coffee lovers and the businesses that satisfy their wishes for hyper-personalized beverages. Today, BUNN is a global leader in dispensed-beverage equipment and is highly regarded for the quality of its products and post-purchase support services. “The ability to maximize optimal operating conditions, minimize downtime and lower lifetime ownership costs supports our belief in offering customers the highest quality beverages and best overall value in dispensed beverage equipment,” says Karalynn McDermott, SVP of Market Development at BUNN.
To deliver on this remote product service initiative, BUNN looked to enhance their BUNNlink Wellness Program for coffee machines by partnering with Mesh Systems. Mesh provided embedded cellular technology within automated espresso machines to connect them to the cloud. At the BUNN control center, service technicians have real-time insight into machine performance through a secure, cloud-based application (created and managed by Mesh) providing device software management, configuration, interactive dashboards, notifications, and reporting.
Kurt Powell, Executive Vice President at BUNN says it best in citing “a service technician for a quick-service customer got an alert on a Friday night, so he just grabbed the part he needed for the repair and headed into the restaurant at 6 A.M. the next morning. He was able to service the equipment before the customer even noticed a problem. With this solution, we know exactly which component to fix before we get there.”