B O O M !
My head turns toward the sound, and in that split second I am pushed hard in two directions at once, and then to the ground. Quickly turning my attention back to where the forces came from, I am greeted with a horrifying sight. Everything slows and I watch in suspended disbelief as a 60-kilo roaster, turning in its sling, follows me to the ground. The red monster comes to rest a few inches from my still-extended left leg. I rise, cursing, shaking and nervously laughing, until I see the fear on the faces of the men around me. It is then that I realize that if I had not been pushed, I surely would have been crushed mid-body by this behemoth. In short, poor preparation and a half-second of inattention nearly cost me my life, or at best a limb. This was my first experience with moving a roastery. It was ill-planned, ill-timed, and the execution was completely chaotic. Moving can tax a business and its personnel nearly to the breaking point, and sometimes beyond. But relocating a roastery is fraught with additional danger. From disconnecting and reconnecting electrical, gas and mechanical systems to permitting and production issues, it can be the most stressful, threatening, and yes, even dangerous task that a roasting company can undertake. What follows are testimonies of roasters who have moved to larger facilities: their trials, tribulations and reflections.
--Terry Davis
Moving for Growth
It's rare for a company's first address to be its last. Growth in the coffee industry can likely be captured in two ways: increasing margin or increasing production, and ideally both. Even a savvy business that grows its margin within the context of an original location may at some point be pushed to move into larger digs based on a growing reputation. Soon, the physical toll of roasting becomes unsustainable, and the efficiency of a small roasting machine is called into question. Freight charges for constantly moving coffee become untenable. Warehousing packaging material can become problematic. And don't forget about the challenge of finding the space to allow efficient workspace for new employees. The problems begin to compound in both happy and stressful ways.
For John Johnson of Berres Brothers Coffee Roasters in Watertown, Wis., a move was not only essential for growth, but also practical. "Our old building was getting too small for the amount of coffee we were roasting," says Johnson. "It was very old ... and had many code violations."
Paul Thornton of Coffee Bean International (CBI) says his business had a less urgent need to move, but like many roasters experiencing steady growth, he had a vision for the future of the business that didn't fit with its current facility, so he is now deep in the planning stages of moving CBI to a new location. "Recent growth patterns suggest we need to expand our capacity, and the current location we are in does not have the space for us to add more equipment and warehouse space," he says. "A second roasting plant was not a reasonable option for us and simply did not make sense for our business. We had plans to invest into more state-of-the-art equipment, up-to-date controls and a facility facelift. At this point, it made sense to find a location we like and just do it."
Don Merritt of Blackstone Coffee indicated a need for moving that both wholesalers and roaster-retailers can identify with: the desire to capture the "other" side of the business. For Merritt and Blackstone, this meant making the jump from wholesale to retail as well. "Our previous location was wholesale only, and we had been waiting for a specific retail space that was well-suited to our growing business," he says. For roasters entering the world of retail, a move also includes the complications of parking, traffic counts and visibility.
Planning the move exists in a kind of nether-region between luxury and necessity. A roaster's business plan may show growth and the necessity for a move in the distant future, but a lost lease, a major new client or a code violation may lay the kibosh on those best-laid plans.
Show Me the Money ... Er, Your Budget and Plan
Once the decision has been made that a move is necessary, the next obvious question may be, "How much is this going to cost?" This should be the focus for any roaster in the planning stages of the move. "Our approach was to invest a lot of time into planning," says Thornton of CBI. "We spoke to many people who have built roasting plants and had the experience of dealing with just this sort of thing. For us to properly plan a budget and have a chance at getting close, we needed to determine who our suppliers were likely to be and obtain as many hard figures as we could. This leaves the overages variable to the unknown, such as permit startup delays or problems, equipment setup delays or even just equipment arrival delays--things that can't be planned, but an expert can sure give a pretty close estimate."
For Merritt, even precision planning could not prevent the element of surprise. "The move came in over budget for several different reasons, but the biggest budget overage was caused by an overzealous and ill-informed local building inspector," Merritt says. "A great deal of additional work relating to the roaster installation caused the unanticipated expense."
Johnson comments on how the Berres Brothers move was an exercise in budgetary discipline: "We cut much of the original plans so the building project would fall into our pre-determined budget. This meant less square footage, a smaller cafe, a smaller conference room and less office space."
Handling Production
Once the budget is balanced, a plan is hatched and perhaps ground has even been broken, a new question arises: how to roast coffee when the roasting equipment is temporarily out of commission?
At Berres Brothers, significant planning went into the production schedule prior to the move. Opposed to the notion of paying another company to toll-roast its product, the Berres team prepared a month in advance of its move by pre-roasting product. Johnson elaborates on the acquisition of a second and larger roasting machine, which eased the transition: "We bought our second roaster, which roasted five times the capacity of our first roaster. We put the roaster on a big metal skid anticipating that some day we would have to move to a larger location. This came in handy the day we moved. The roaster went out the door around 10 a.m. and was running that same afternoon in the new location." Clearly, owning multiple machines relieves some pressure.
At CBI, Thornton credits his company's plan for what he hopes will be a seamless move. "We are actually in a very good position for this. We can set up a secondary shipping process in our new plant, put in our new equipment, get it up and running, and off we go. We may plan to roast and package in our old plant and ship to our new plant to distribute for a few days. We are expecting very little production downtime. Again, this all comes with the planning. The success of hitting the plan is in good part a credit to how good your consultant is, the planning of your engineers and management, the abilities of your movers and supplier support." For Thornton, the ability to produce at the old plant while simultaneously moving to the new one is crucial.
Making the Move Happ en
A well-known bumper sticker reads: "Yes this is my truck, and no, I won't help you move." This goes for moving roasteries, too. Even if you operate a micro-roastery with less than a few bags of green beans and maybe a handful of modified popcorn poppers, you likely don't want to disassemble and reassemble everything yourself. A friend with a truck is always helpful. A larger company is no different; it just requires more friends with more--and bigger--trucks. Also, being handy and having a good understanding of gas lines, plumbing, electrical needs and your machinery can help you manage the move, the movers, the landlord and the inspectors.
Merritt of Blackstone Coffee saved money and maintained control of his move by utilizing his own skills. "I am a licensed contractor, so my company was able to perform about 90 percent of the work," he says. "This helped to significantly control costs, and the issues we had with our local building department were resolved relatively fast. We performed all our own planning, building, moving, and the installation of the roaster and its venting system."
For larger companies like Berres Brothers or Coffee Bean International, moving and installation concerns were complicated due to the scale of their operations. CBI visited the roasting plants of friends in the industry and interviewed several contractors before making decisions. Its corporate size played an advantageous role in getting players involved in the building process. "One of the advantages of building a large roasting plant is that it's a big project that many want to be a part of," Thornton says. "Yes, we did spend a lot of time looking, but honestly, once the word gets out that you are building a roasting plant that will produce over 20 million pounds, people start to come to you from all over."
Keeping it in the community trumped other priorities during the Berres Brothers move. The company hired local building contractors even though their bid was higher than some from out of town. They also hired an architect to design the space and draw blueprints, and hired a professional moving company that was fully insured to move highly prized equipment.
2 0 / 2 0 : Hind sight and Lessons Learned
"I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD."
- Jake Blues, "The Blues Brothers"
Even with a brilliant plan in hand and a litany of contingencies in tow, even with a backup roaster in place and great contractors and the most pliable inspectors, things can fall apart.
Merritt was candid about his move and some details he might have handled differently: "The biggest thing I would do different would be to work more closely with our local building authority during the plan review process to insure that the plan review department is on the same page as the building inspection department. Our building plans had been thoroughly reviewed and approved, but we failed our final mechanical inspection due to our local inspector's lack of knowledge of a coffee roaster and its venting system. With tremendous support from my roaster manufacturer and our local gas company, we were able to finally satisfy the building inspection department requirements and passed our remaining inspection. This event delayed our opening by 10 days and caused significant budgetary strains."
Coffee consultant Victor Allen Mondry echoes Merritt's sentiments almost exactly, recommending that roasters focus on two things during a move. "Number one, get all inspection requirements in writing in advance," he says. "Number two, order long lead-time items, like chimneys, sooner."
For the Berres Brothers, the greatest challenge was timing. Although production continued to flow seamlessly, the company maintained two separate facilities while the glitches were worked out on the newer one. This meant additional unforeseen transportation costs on top of the stress of the move.
Terry Davis recalls the 2007 Roasters Guild Retreat, where he ran into Thornton of CBI while both were working on laptops in the lounge of the resort:
"As we talked, I realized that, while technically we were working on different projects, we were both working on budgets for moving roasteries. And neither of us was having an especially good time of it. As a production manager, Thornton was looking at the move for CBI. I had been hired as a consultant in an eminent domain case for a state highway department that was seizing property from a medium-sized, 40-year-old roastery for a new limited-access onramp. I was attempting to reconcile the cost differences of three estimates to move this facility and get it up and running with a limited amount of production disruption. There was about a $3 million spread in the estimates to move this one facility. One estimate was nearly 50 pages long, and indecipherable. The huge split from the $500,000 to the $3.5 million estimate and the estimate in between, I believe, reflected the difficulty of moving equipment that was operational but nearly obsolete--or in the case of conveyors, loaders and storage bins, may have been built on site. What made the situation even more tenuous was that no one could foretell whether any of this old equipment would survive a move without a major rebuild or pass muster when re-inspected by the building and fire inspectors, or what the costs of bringing this equipment up to code would eventually be. At the end of the day, lawyers were brought in and it cost everybody, especially taxpayers, a hell of a lot of money."
Moving a roastery is seldom as simple as it appears. But like many of the projects you will attempt in your coffee career, a little homework can go a long way toward lessening the stress and hazards of a move. And then your business ideally will be more productive and efficient until the next time you outgrow your facility. By that time, you may well be retired. You hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment