Home-grown coffee house upgrades their expresso machines to boost efficiency, with the help of NTUC e2i’s WorkPro Job Redesign Scheme
Established in 2017, TNT Holdings LLP is a home-grown speciality coffee company that offers various coffee solutions including, but not limited to, wholesale coffee bean supplies, professional barista courses and large-scale corporate functions. Better known as Kings Cart Coffee, the team provides one of the best speciality coffees in Singapore from sources around the world. Their cups of joe are often prepared on fresh and in small batches to provide peak quality, flavour, and freshness.
With success comes a new set of challenges as the company grows in size. Initially, a single group coffee machine allowed baristas to produce up to 100 cups of coffee per hour. In addition, coffee beans were ground using a separate machine.
With a limit on how fast a barista can work, the use of a single group coffee machine proved to be inefficient in the long run. For their mature workers, operating the machine while simultaneously putting beans in the grinder proved to be cumbersome and exhausting, especially when working under pressure and understaffed.
Envisaging the need to provide a conducive working environment for their employees and ensure that work processes are efficient, TNT Holdings enlisted the help of NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute (e2i).
Under the WorkPro Job Redesign Initiative, they have adopted the use of the three-group Automatic Expresso Machine. With the increase in the number of group heads on the coffee machine, the coffee output has notably increased – two baristas can work simultaneously to prepare up to 250 cups of coffee per hour, twice the number of cuppas as compared to their previous single group machine.
With automation in place, grinding time has been reduced significantly by 30 percent or more and eliminated the need for manual grinding. Mature workers have been able to take regular breaks, which, in turn, improves productivity and concentration levels.
Ultimately, the WorkPro Job Redesign Scheme has helped Kings Cart Coffee reduce costs and function more efficiently to the benefit of their employees. It is also encouraging to note that the company has plans to implement more incentives for their employees in the future.
For more information on TNT Holdings LLP, please visit www.kingscartcoffee.com.
