BRCC scales across North America, while positively impacting their bottom line
Key successes
Company background
Black Rifle Coffee Company (BRCC) is a veteran-owned coffee company, serving premium coffee and culture to people who love America. As a Veteran-founded and operated company, Black Rifle Coffee also strives to help other service-members successfully transition from the military into entrepreneurship. They provide assistance to Veterans who seek to launch a business of their own, helping more companies like Black Rifle Coffee Company become a reality.
Challenge
Finding the right solution for a growing business to manage the chaos of going from operating 3 stores to over 100
Craig Chambers is BRCC’s Retail Facilities Manager who joined the company earlier in 2021 when they had three brick-and-mortar corporate stores. As BRCC started developing and growing, they went from 3 to 10 stores and Craig quickly realized that it was stressful to try to find a locksmith, an AC guy, and make sure that he was getting reliable information from different sources to get equipment fixed.
Craig was constantly getting information on what's wrong with different stores in many different ways - company phone, company Slack Channel, company email and phone calls.
Although BRCC already had a repair & maintenance software-based system in place, it was proving to be yet another channel for somebody to tell Craig if something was wrong at their facility and Craig still had to go out and use Google, make phone calls or ask people he knew vendors they’d recommend.
Once he did find someone, he still had to call them and ask them to come to the store ASAP and vendors would charge a ridiculous amount of money because it was an emergency job.
At 3 stores, you can manage the chaos. At 10 stores, you can do that but it’s very hard and as BRCC continues to grow with a goal to grow to 150 to 250 stores across the US, Craig found it hard to imagine continuing to manage things without having a system in place.
Craig spoke to our leadership team about needing something to be able to manage the chaos and keep the communication in one platform and track what we’re doing to not just help with operations today but to prepare for growth plans.
“The price was great. I’ve had to tell that story over and over to the same people because they just don't believe me that we get this service and technology and it's not going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars a year like other things do.”
Solution
Choosing ResQ
“You guys tailored the solution to fit our unique needs and offered a marketplace of trusted service professionals. Also, you do equipment tracking and equipment tagging which is huge for us because sometimes I don’t get to see a store for 4 months at a time to see how it’s going, especially when it comes to equipment that’s under warranty. With ResQ, I know what’s happening at every store without needing to be there physically and I can review jobs and spending so I can help the team with decisions.”
1. One system of record and communication
Every store now has an avenue to put all of their repairs & maintenance information in, track what stores are having equipment issues, how often they’re fixing each equipment and track the payments.
“You guys have helped with everything we needed as we started out from a small organization to growing and opening new stores. You’ve helped us be as good as we can be because of the vendor relationships you have in the marketplace, because we can track everything, and because of the communications platform you’ve provided.”
2. A platform that support scale without additional costs
Craig can add as many people to BRCC’s ResQ account and control the level of access each person has. “I’m not paying per person or user which some providers either charge extra for or cap you at being able to add General Managers.”, shared Craig.
BRCC’s General Managers are not onsite 24 hours a day or everyday so the fact the ResQ gives the BRCC team the ability to give access to anyone based on their needs has been instrumental in keeping each store accountable to quality standards.
“We don’t have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to bring on multiple team members to join facilities but we can keep the team lean and make sure the money is going to building and maintaining the stores and do it right and track it through ResQ.”
3. Communication management personalized to your operations
“We use ResQ as an accountability tool for facility and equipment maintenance. With ResQ, communication flows up to everyone who makes decisions in each store.
We use ResQ Internal Work Orders for managers to sign off on tasks some of which have a very sizeable financial impact to keeping stores operational. For example, I can look at every store and say whether a store is not cleaning their $40,000 espresso machine every day like they were assigned to do which will lead to the equipment breaking.”
4. Focus on our company mission and not everyday R&M headaches
BRCC uses ResQ for scheduling, managing and tracking Preventive Maintenances and recurring services from equipment maintenance to pressure washing, quarterly window washing, and landscaping.
General Managers at each store use ResQ to know when the next service is happening and what it is, and when somebody is coming to their store to fix something. This way, BRCC can hold the stores accountable as well as the vendors to make sure they are maintaining the equipment and facilities.
“ResQ allows me to take a step back from the minute data and the fine-tuning of things. ResQ takes care of the small day-to-day things so I can manage everything else and ensure that our coffee shops are selling coffee and are operational, are safe for workers and are providing what our customers expect. I now have data to help me know if we’re doing right by the company and answer questions like: is the company spending money where it doesn’t need to? Are we maintaining the equipment we need to and do we have the right equipment?
"ResQ gives us the advantage of looking into the future vs having to be reactive."
I’m able to use operational data to share with the leadership team so we can collectively know if any piece of equipment is hindering what we deliver to our customers; or if some equipment is hindering us from bringing on more employees and hiring more veterans if we’re spending $10,000 on a particular piece of equipment in every store.”
“Every store represents our company values from the coffee we serve to the welcoming environment we create. ResQ allows me to do what my job really is without sacrificing the quality of what we deliver.”
Impacting the bottom line
Most of BRCC’s coffee machines are so specialized to maintain, it was hard to find vendors who were available at a few hours’ notice. Vendors used to take 24 to 48 hours to get onsite. If a piece of machinery went down at a drive-thru location, that would cost BRCC an average of $6K or $7K a day in sales.
“Since working with ResQ, we’ve been able to get service professionals onsite fast enough to avoid losing revenue because of broken equipment. We used to wait up to 48 hours to get a technician onsite to fix our specialized coffee machines but now we get same-day service with ResQ which significantly reduces equipment downtime and also saves us a couple of thousands of dollars.”
More growth on the horizon for Black Rifle Coffee Company
BRCC's growth roadmap is as potent as their coffee is with plans to increase building new stores every year.
“With ResQ, I can confidently support our accelerated growth plans. I know next year, looking for the right vendors and ensuring all existing and new stores are operational without a system like ResQ, it would be next to impossible to keep up with it.”
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