Customer Stories
How Blank Street Coffee Scaled from Chaos to Strategic Facilities Management
Key successes
saved on HVAC & refrigeration through improved preventive maintenance
Boston locations planned within one year, supported by ResQ's scalable platform
potential savings identified through ResQ data analytics
Company Background
Blank Street is a rapidly growing coffee chain known for its premium matcha and specialty coffee offerings. Starting in Brooklyn before expanding to the UK, the company has built a successful international presence and returned to the US market with aggressive growth plans. Currently operating 45 stores across the US - with seven in Boston, two in Washington DC, and the remainder in New York - Blank Street has ambitious expansion goals, planning to more than double their Boston footprint within the next year.
Challenge
From Email Chaos to Strategic Operations
Dean Elias, Facilities Lead at Blank Street, inherited a facilities management system that was anything but systematic. Before ResQ, the company was "operating all their email with vendors that our team knew from previous jobs. That was very chaotic and hard to manage. Hard to keep track of."
The challenges were multifaceted:
- Reactive maintenance culture: General managers were submitting tickets for "any little thing," leading to excessive vendor costs
- No historical data: Equipment maintenance history was scattered across emails and personal contacts
- Scaling bottlenecks: Rapid expansion plans threatened by inability to manage facilities efficiently across multiple markets
- Vendor relationship chaos: No centralized way to manage, track, or hold vendors accountable
- Financial visibility gaps: Lack of data-driven insights into repair and maintenance spending patterns
"Early on, we were allowing our GMs to submit tickets. So any little thing that came up was getting sent to a vendor. We were spending a lot of money."
Solution
Transforming Facilities Management Through Data and Strategy
After implementing ResQ, Blank Street evolved from reactive ticket submission to strategic facilities management powered by data analytics and preventive maintenance programs.
Strategic Work Order Management
The transformation began with changing how the team approached maintenance requests. Rather than treating every issue as an emergency requiring vendor intervention, Blank Street learned to leverage ResQ's data capabilities.
We've since started using it to its fullest and have grown to be more strategic with how we're submitting work orders and when it's necessary to go in and see if it's something that we could have avoided with preventative maintenance.
Data-Driven Cost Optimization
ResQ's analytics capabilities revealed significant opportunities for cost savings through preventive maintenance optimization.
At the end of last year, we took a look at our HVAC and refrigeration and found around $30,000 of money that we were spending on repairs that could have been avoided had we been doing a little bit more preventative maintenance.
Based on these insights, Blank Street strategically increased their preventive maintenance frequency from twice to three times annually for HVAC, ice machines, and refrigeration systems. "We've seen a noticeable difference in the amount of tickets that we get for those things, because we have someone coming out and doing a preventive maintenance on those pieces of equipment more often."
Market Expansion Support
Perhaps most significantly, ResQ enabled Blank Street's aggressive Boston market expansion.
"I don't know how we would have survived in Boston without ResQ."
The platform's vendor sourcing capabilities proved invaluable when specialized needs arose, such as finding a plant maintenance vendor for their Boston locations' distinctive plant displays - a service that would have required extensive research and vetting without ResQ's network.
Seamless Scaling Infrastructure
ResQ's onboarding process for new locations eliminates traditional scaling friction points.
That process of when we open new stores is very easy. ResQ makes it very easy. We send an email, say we're opening these stores. ResQ gets them uploaded onto the platform for us. And we have the option of ResQ coming and tagging all of our equipment.
Results
The partnership has delivered measurable results across multiple dimensions:
Boston Market Optimization: Through data analysis, Blank Street identified $80,000 in potential savings, leading to the decision to hire a dedicated facilities person in the Boston market.
HVAC & Refrigeration Savings: Strategic preventive maintenance adjustments saved $30,000 in avoidable repair costs.
Operational Efficiency: Significant reduction in overall ticket volume, translating to direct cost savings and improved operational focus.
The platform has fundamentally changed how Dean approaches his role, shifting from reactive firefighting to strategic planning.
It takes all the stress away from me. I have a million other things to stress about. And I don't have to stress about if ResQ's going to help me. I don't ever feel like I'm left out to dry. Using ResQ versus what we used to do, just everything through emails, it's like night and day. How much more organized, easy it is to manage facilities.
Most critically for a rapidly expanding brand, ResQ has proven it can support aggressive growth without proportional increases in facilities management complexity.
"Without ResQ we couldn't have expanded in Boston and grown at the rate that we're growing."
With plans to grow from 7 to 15 Boston locations within a year, Blank Street's confidence in their scaling capabilities is directly tied to ResQ's platform infrastructure.
Conclusion
Blank Street's transformation from email-based chaos to data-driven facilities management demonstrates how the right platform can unlock both immediate cost savings and long-term scaling capabilities. By moving beyond basic ticketing to strategic maintenance planning, vendor relationship management, and market expansion support, ResQ has become integral to Blank Street's growth strategy.
The partnership exemplifies how modern facilities management platforms can transform from cost centers to strategic enablers, providing the operational foundation necessary for ambitious expansion plans in competitive markets.
"We're able to give that to ResQ and we trust that it's all going to be in place and ready to go. Our preventative maintenance vendors are all going to be set up and ready to start when that store is ready to open."
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