The Cutting Edge
Blenders Race for Retail Revival
by Steven Krolak


Specialty coffee culture is built on quality beans, handcrafted drinks, individualized service, and a relaxed atmosphere. Think of the Central Perk in television's "Friends."
    But specialty coffee retail is increasingly built on speed and horsepower. For this, think of the chariot race in "Ben Hur." As consumer demand drives coffeehouse owners to offer more complicated drinks on the QT, and retail pressures push blender companies to develop stronger and faster blades, baristi seek to harness the muscle of increasingly intelligent machines as they strive to best their competition.

Back To The Future
The Fireside Coffee Lodge is located in Portland, Ore. It is a large space, and lives up to its name with a stone hearth and plenty of rough-hewn, country-pine furniture, including rocking chairs and sofas. Deer heads are mounted on the wall, and from the ceiling dangle lanterns, miniature bark canoes, toboggans, wooden skis, and snowshoes.
    "When I was 13," says Tori Lungren, the owner, "I designed a log cabin, because it was always my dream to live in the woods. Well, this is my cabin in the woods."
    The "woods," in this case, is a gritty stretch of SE Powell Blvd., a major commuter thoroughfare and state highway.
Lungren draws couples, families, bible-study groups, and students from a nearby naturopathic college. Her 24-hour operation also attracts policemen on late-night patrol and music fans from a nearby concert venue.
    "I try to maintain a rustic atmosphere, but I also have computers and wi-fi. As a business owner, you have to go with the flow."
    These days, that flow means blended drinks. Lungren has two variable-speed blenders, but the demand for smoothies and other blended drinks is compelling her to contemplate an upgrade.
For the retailer, this expanding taste universe can translate into opportunity, as the demand for blended drinks and smoothies not only helps balance highs and lows of cash flow--hot-weather nights are now no longer dead times at the coffeehouse--but is an immense income generator on its own.
    And yet there are trade-offs. Not only do blenders cost money--often big money--but an extensive blended menu requires counter space for the machinery, shelf space for the mixes, freezer space for the fruit ingredients, in addition to further labor for making the drinks and cleaning the pitchers.

Speed Freaks
When I was a boy, my friends and I hung out at Orange Julius, then the only local purveyor of blended drinks. They were cold, foamy, sweet concoctions, but what I remember more than the taste is the sound. It was LOUD in there! When the ingredients went into the blender, and the clerk hit the pulse button, the room filled with the shattering crash of metal, plastic and ice, and we fought the urge to dive under the tables and hide from flying debris.
    Coffeehouses were always the antithesis of this--small, intimate venues where murmured conversation dominated the aural spectrum. But as the blended drink mania forces blender manufacturers to ramp up the horsepower, the once placid café environment is turning into a buzzing, whirring theater of electronic innovation.
    According to Mary Rodgers, director of marketing communications for Stamford, Conn.-based Waring Corporation, there are three elements driving blender innovation at this time. "They are power, technology and programmability."
    Power is needed chiefly to crush ice and a vast array of powdered and other ingredients. Rodgers puts the math as simply as possible: "More power allows the user to produce more drinks in less time. The quicker the drinks are produced, the faster they can service the customers and, in turn, generate more income."
    These days, blender engines deliver anywhere from .3 to 3.5 horsepower, with 3 horsepower increasingly becoming the standard. That's as much power as you'll find in lawn mowers and chain saws. According to Jason Reed, senior product manager of Glen Allen, Va.-based Hamilton Beach Commercial, today's machines spin at anywhere from 8000 to 37,000 revolutions per minute.
    Given the range and diversity, it's fair to ask: how much power is enough? Dick Galbraith, executive vice president of Orem, Utah-based BlendTec Corporation, says, "You can never have enough power."
    The ultimate point of all this power is speed, and profitability. As Rodgers puts it, "Users need to generate consistent drinks as fast as possible when serving customers." Speed can also help reduce overhead. Referring to the drive-thru market, Galbraith says, "If it takes 90 seconds to make a shake, you're out of business." Especially when new blenders can make the same drink in 20 seconds. "Today's market can't afford the soda jerk," he says. "The labor costs are too high."

I Am Blender-Hear Me Roar
The Fireside Coffee Lodge manages to be both busy and pin-drop quiet, even at peak times. The overall calm is broken only by the sounds of espresso and other machines creating specialty drinks. While Tori Lungren accepts the noise--"it's the sound of commerce taking place," she says, "and to lose that would take away from the mystique of specialty coffee"--she appreciates the concerns of some of her clients. "My customers have only one complaint: the noise of blending."
    Jon Katz is director of engineering for Cleveland, Ohio-based Vita-Mix Corporation. He is also sensitive to noise--or sound, as it is referred to in the blender industry. "I can hear a bad drink happening," he says, and likens blending at its worst to "having a 747 in your kitchen."
    Joints like Orange Julius proved, for a time, that customers would endure a mechanized din in exchange for a blended drink. This is no longer the case. Not only do consumers now demand a specialty beverage experience without permanent hearing loss, says Galbraith, but at some point excessive decibels loomed as a possible occupational safety and health issue for retail employers. Responding to this dual challenge, blender manufacturers began equipping their machines with sound-reducing enclosures. Now these are standard on most professional models, and come with features of their own. BlendTec, for example, offers an enclosure that rests on the pitcher lid, allowing an operator to leave the machine unattended while completing other tasks.
    Another important--if counterintuitive--solution may be more power. "Most of the noise occurs in the first three seconds, when ice is being crushed," says Galbraith. Additional power shortens the duration of this part of the cycle. Blade design also contributes to speed. Reed of Hamilton Beach notes that "blades are formed to various pitches and angles to create different chopping effects . . . The key here is to achieve the most effective blend in the quickest time possible."
    One of the most significant challenges for blender manufacturers is cavitation, the gouging and grinding that occurs when drink ingredients are pushed into air pockets at the top of the blender container. This happens when the blade spins too fast at the beginning of the cycle, or when the ingredients freeze up, as when too much ice is added, or when the ingredients are too cold to begin with. The result of cavitation is incomplete blending. The ingredients don't fold into one another in the perfect cloverleaf pattern. "Cavitation stops the drink from happening," Katz says.
    Major blender manufacturers have taken a variety of steps to combat cavitation. Mary Rodgers of Waring maintains that empty space can be combatted by better design. "When designing blenders, the jar, blade assembly and motor have to work as one entire unit. If any of those elements are out of sync, you won't get great performance."
    Once the design is working, user error can still cause cavitation, so Waring blenders are designed with Slow StartTM, Rodgers says, "so that they start at a slower speed for a few seconds before they go into full speed." Other manufacturers have similar controls. For its part, Vita-Mix's Portion Blending Systemtm, a feature on more elaborate models, automatically adds ice in the proper proportion to other ingredients, reducing the potential for operator error.

The Smart Blender
These days cars know where they are before their drivers do, so it's no surprise that blenders are getting smarter even as they become more powerful.
    With electronics getting cheaper and smaller, and with many customers willing to pay more money for more sophisticated machines, manufacturers are pushing the envelope of programmability.
    From peristaltic pumps and computers that allow operators to program measurements to within 1/40 of an ounce, to microprocessors that check the position of blades 10,000 times per second, allowing for ultra-precise control and safety, automation is taking more and more of the guesswork out of blended drinks. All-in-one blending stations require little of the operator beyond adding the ingredients and pushing a button.
    Like speed, automation allows operators to spend more time doing other things. As BlendTec's Galbraith puts it, "We want coffeehouse owners to spend their time taking orders, face-to-face, and not measuring out drinks . . . We want to take the measuring out of the equation in order to increase turnover and profit."
    According to Jason Reed of Hamilton Beach Commercial, automatic shut-off at preset times "is becoming a necessary feature," since it allows the coffeehouse operator to multi-task while the blender is "doing its job."
    The overriding goal of programmability is consistency, the Holy Grail of long-term retail success. "Coffeehouses benefit from the ability to generate drink after drink, quickly and consistently every time," says Waring's Mary Rodgers. The days of smart blenders that can "learn what you like," in the words of Katz, are at hand. New blades currently being tested, he says, could cut drink-prep times in half. The future holds touch-screen technology and programmability from computers and even e-mail. While these innovations will certainly benefit larger chains, who would be able to program menus into all their stores from a single keyboard, independent shops will also be affected, by rising consumer expectations.
    Back at the rustic Fireside Coffee Lodge, the high-tech world of smart blenders seems at odds with the 1930s CCC-styled environment. I wonder, at what point does the desire for exact reproduction infringe upon the handcrafted spirit of specialty coffee? Will baristi embrace "smart" blenders that reduce their hallowed calling to the impress of a single digit?
    Tori Lungren is aware of these issues. She has a big demand for blended drinks and smoothies, so she is considering upgrading her blenders. But many of the new models are too expensive. "I know what's out there, in terms of technology," she says. "But since it's such a big investment for a small coffeehouse, I'm more concerned with whether it will still meet my needs three years from now."
The door opens to admit another customer, and for an instant the rumble of cars and trucks intrudes on the tranquility of the coffeehouse.
"I'll probably bite the bullet and buy a covered blender," she muses. "But that's about as high-tech as I plan to get."

Steven Krolak is the editor of Fresh Cup Magazine. He can be reached at: steven@freshcup.com.