QC Check: How Well Does a Snowy Plover Travel?
We really miss having our cafés be fully open. There are many of us at Andytown that chose to work in coffee because we love creating a welcoming environment that people can visit and gather with others to enjoy a pick-me-up. Still, employee and community safety is our number one concern, and we are in no rush to “return to normal.” Instead, we’re constantly thinking of different ways in which we can serve our community.
Currently, customers are able visit three of our locations and order coffee and pastries to-go. We wanted to find a way to serve folks who are unable to visit our stores in person, so are working with a delivery service. Our goal is to serve high quality beverages and food, so before proceeding with a delivery service, we did our due diligence and tested the quality of drinks as they travelled.
For one hour, I taste tested 8 beverages while on the road. While Michael drove throughout San Francisco, I sipped each drink every 10 minutes and assessed their quality. To minimize the impact of over-caffeination, I drank plenty of water that day and ate a full meal before beginning the test. I also made sure that I didn’t have any more tasting to do when I returned to the roastery & coffee lab!
The eight drinks I taste tested were:
Drip coffee
Latte
Cappuccino
Iced Latte
Iced Coffee
Snowy Plover
Matcha Plover
Huckleberry Plover
Getting ready to drive out with Michael!
Matcha Plover passing the taste test at 30 minutes
What was the outcome? At about 20 minutes into driving, the cappuccino became cool, the latte dropped down to a cappuccino temperature, the drip coffee was still hot, and all the iced drinks were tasting great. At about 40 minutes, the latte and cappuccino were too cool, the drip coffee was still hot enough to drink, and the iced beverages were still tasty. In fact, all of the snowy plovers were still pretty sparkly! At one hour, the ice in the cold beverages were close to being fully melted. The iced drinks tasted ok, but I’d cap it at the 45 minute mark.
Based on this test run, we decided that it’s best to offer iced drinks and drip coffee for delivery because their quality held up the longest.
If you’d like a Snowy Plover or iced mocha delivered to your doorstep, click on the following link.