Kaldi’s Coffee, operating 14 locations in St. Louis and Atlanta, encountered significant challenges in maintaining recipe consistency, accurate costing, and effective training. Previously, the company relied on Excel spreadsheets for costing data and email-based recipes This approach often resulted in inconsistencies, particularly with batch sizes, and errors from handwritten annotations.
They needed a solution to reduce the time spent analyzing menu data, improve consistency across locations, and find an easy way to monitor theoretical food costs. Cannon Dowell, the POS and IT Administrator at Kaldi's Coffee, led the effort to integrate meez and address these issues.
By integrating meez, Kaldi's Coffee has significantly reduced the time spent analyzing menu data. The managing team can now focus more on strategic decisions rather than getting bogged down in data management. This streamlined approach allows for quicker adjustments to recipes and cost management, enhancing overall operational efficiency.
“We have a few items where it’s essential for locations to be conscious of their batch sizes. We'll develop a recipe anticipating one thing, but some cafes might need to make four times the batch, while others only need to do a half batch. That’s why we’ve been getting everyone on board with meez."
The team also needed a way to standardize their core recipes without limiting each café’s ability to scale batch sizes based on daily demand. Historically, staff would scribble personal notes in physical binders to adjust recipes on the fly—leading to inconsistencies and confusion across the business. That’s why the team turned to meez.
“Before meez, our team would make their own annotations in a book. But now they can log on, change a recipe to a half batch, and meez does everything for them. It creates a more official way to handle recipes. However, any changes related to instructions, costing, or similar things still stay at the leadership level to ensure everything is done as intended.”
Kaldi's Coffee uses meez to streamline team training across its 14 locations in St. Louis and Atlanta, focusing on recipe management and consistency. With regular seasonal menu rollouts every three months, meez plays a critical role in getting current staff up to speed by providing recipe books and visual aids like pictures alongside instructions. This method helps avoid miscommunication, especially across multiple locations.
"We've started sending out recipe books and invites for team members to view everything and have experimented with using meez docs and adding pictures to recipe instructions. It’s been a huge improvement. Describing things verbally doesn't always translate well across multiple locations, but having a visual aid helps tremendously.””
Kaldi's also leverages meez to simplify batch management. Instead of using physical recipe books with handwritten notes for different batch sizes, team members can now adjust batch sizes directly within the recipe in meez. This has significantly improved efficiency in both daily operations and onboarding new staff. New kitchen managers can immediately access all recipes through meez, eliminating the need to search through scattered documents.
“Each location has a different yield or batch need. Previously, we had physical recipe books with annotations like ‘only put in five cups for a half batch.’ Now, staff can change the batch size directly in the recipe, streamlining everything. Onboarding new staff has also become easier. New kitchen managers can access all our recipes immediately, whereas before, they were scattered all over Google Drive.”
meez has empowered the leadership team to update recipes and make necessary changes with ease. This has ensured that costing remains accurate and up-to-date. The system's efficiency in managing and updating cost data has eliminated the errors associated with manual data entry and outdated spreadsheets, providing a reliable foundation for financial management.
“We review costs at a leadership level almost weekly, especially now. We're having more conversations about how we cost our menu and what our strategies are. In the past, we might do a price increase once a year or even less frequently, but now we're figuring out how to cost everything out with constant price fluctuations, like when eggs doubled in price. We serve breakfast, so we need to react quickly.”
The quick access to theoretical food cost data provided by meez has been a game changer for Kaldi's Coffee. The ability to view and analyze this information in real-time has enabled the team to make informed decisions swiftly. This data-driven approach supports better financial planning and menu adjustments, contributing to the company's profitability and operational success.
“One topic that recently came up was whether we should be costing our recipes with paper products. For example, we used to always include a cutlery kit, which costs 80 cents, but we realized most items only need a fork and some napkins, which is 19 cents. Without including those items in our recipe, we wouldn’t know that.”
meez has fostered a sense of ownership and empowerment among the Kaldi's Coffee team. By providing access to recipes and operational data at various levels, every team member can take responsibility for their role in maintaining consistency and quality.
With meez, there’s ownership everywhere. Everyone has the access they need at their level. This widespread access has streamlined workflows and enhanced accountability, leading to a more cohesive and efficient team.
“Everyone has access to the restaurant's computer to print things out. In the past, pre-meez, we’d have a master recipe book, and we would email it to the GM, and it was up to them to print it. Now there’s ownership everywhere. The kitchen manager or even a team member can find and print the official recipes.”
Kaldi’s Coffee has achieved a new level of operational excellence and efficiency thanks to meez. The ability to manage recipes consistently across all locations, make data-driven financial decisions, and reduce waste has positively impacted the company’s bottom line. Additionally, the empowerment and ownership experienced by the team members have streamlined workflows and increased accountability.
As Kaldi’s Coffee continues to grow and evolve, the foundation set by integrating meez will support sustained operational excellence and scalability. The positive business impact, highlighted by accurate costing and improved team efficiency, underscores the value of meez in driving the coffee company's success.
“We love using meez not only because of its current capabilities, but because of the simple user interface. I’m good with computers, but we want all of our leadership to be able to understand what they’re doing. meez is quick, simple, and easy to understand. If we lost that, we’d lose a lot of productivity and spend a lot of time trying to find solutions for our cafes and figuring out costs.”
See Gordon Culinary Pro in action by clicking next.
Save time, be more efficient, and cost recipes easily with meez.
Get the ultimate upgrade from Recipe Manager that will save you more time and money.
meez is a recipe tool that is revolutionizing the way work is done in kitchens around the world.
.png)