Since Ona Coffee Founder Sasa Sestic’s victory at the 2015 World Barista Championship (WBC), the Canberra-based café and roastery has reach a new level of prominence.
“We have tripled the staff [in Adelaide] to meet the demand and popularity of our coffee,” says Jennie McClelland, Administration and Customer Service at Ona Coffee. “We are supplying coffee to cafés across Australia, including Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. This growth really consumes a lot of our focus.”
To deal with the rapid growth, Jennie says Ona Coffee implemented new technologies to streamline its processes.
“Technology is integral to every aspect of coffee from farming green beans through to producing and distributing the end product,” she says.
“While producing great coffee is still a very hands-on business, our producers have benefited from technological advancements in agriculture, including growing, processing and storage practises.”
On the roasting front, Ona Coffee has implemented computer software attached to its commercial roasters. In terms of preparation, it promotes the use of digital barista scales and following specific recipes on how to serve coffee.
“For our wholesale business we now have an automatic packing machine for the one-kilogram bags,” Jennie says. “We also use Ordermentum to help us manage orders and payment in the one place.”
Ordermentum is a business-to-business ordering system founded by professionals with experience in the food and beverage sector, including Andrew Low, formerly of Toby’s Estate, and Adam Theobold, Founder of Beat the Q – now known as Hey You.
“When I started here one year ago our Sales Manager was calling each café individually on a Monday morning to collect orders. When I think back, it seems archaic and completely impractical, as our orders flow in seven days a week to meet our delivery schedule,” Jennie says.
“We rolled out Ordermentum for our Sydney clients in September last year, perfected the processes, items available and payment terms, then added the rest of our clients during October and November.
“We now have 90 per cent of our clients paying via Ordermentum and most of our orders are now prepaid.”
Jennie says the benefits of Ordermentum have included its user-friendliness, the mobile app assisting Ona Coffee clients place their orders, and streamlined payments.
For more information, visit www.ordermentum.com/.