A new face for an old favorite

A new face for foodservice

The Coffee Club has traditionally followed a cook-and-serve café model, featuring a ready-toeat display and hot breakfast offerings. Recently, however, that service model – along with the brand and store design – has undergone a major transformation. “We wanted to increase our customers’ expectations,” says Bright. “When our new CEO was appointed in 2023, we conducted deep customer research into brand positioning, brand identity, building customer loyalty, store experience, and product evolution. “We have gone back to our grassroots in the 1980s, with the nostalgia of a bright and colorful design, and we are developing the look, feel and tone of our stores, moving away from a cookiecutter approach,” he adds. “We even changed our coffee at the end of last year, for the first time in 35 years, moving to our own brand.”

To support this product development journey, The Coffee Club partnered with foodservice and bakery equipment specialist Moffat. The brief was to not only supply equipment, but to improve kitchen workflows and operational processes. The solution had to be flexible enough to accommodate various store formats, from enclosed kitchens to fully open designs serving customers directly. Moffat builds fully tailored solutions, collaborating with chefs to provide comprehensive culinary support – from menu development and testing to planning, implementation, and staff training. Kitchens at The Coffee Club now feature doublestacked Turbofan E33T5 convection ovens paired with a humidified hot holding cabinet on the side. The Turbofan cook-and-hold oven system enables more in-house food preparation, lower cost of goods, and enhances food quality. It also supports a shift to a preparationfocused workflow, where food is cooked in advance then held at safe temperatures, speeding service up.

“They wanted to move from the impinger ovens they had been using to a more flexible cooking platform based on optimal cooking and holding principles,” explains Dan Savage, sales manager, National Accounts/QSR at Moffat. “Standard restaurants have peak demand periods, but this is sometimes harder to predict in other operations [like coffee houses]. With the E33T5 you can do batch cooking and the EHT10 hot holding equipment keeps it at the right temperature and humidity, meaning it can be served when needed as if cooked fresh.”