Are Your Outdated Printing Processes Being as Stubborn as a Mule?

Café Mule & Ironside Roasting Co. Found a Way to #KeepCodingSimple; Here’s How They Did it

Are You a Coffee and Mule Fanatic? 

Did you ever think that coffee, a mule, and coding would mix? Neither did we, but that’s the beauty of our mission to #KeepCodingSimple; we get to interact with all types of different characters and their business ventures. This time around, we’ll be focusing on a coffee roasting company that aims to fuel life’s adventures with the help of good coffee and Richard the Mule. 

Colin Seeley, founder of Ironside Roasting Co. and Matt Bishop, founder of Café Mule teamed up back in 2018, but the trio wouldn’t have been complete without Richard the Mule. Originally, Ironside Roasting Co. was created from Mr. Seeley’s passion for sourcing unique coffees, achieving the perfect roast, and developing products; while Mr. Bishop’s enthusiasm for cold brew, love for the community, and instinctive business sense led to Café Mule and well the merger was just too good of an opportunity to pass up on. 

What Challenges Were Café Mule & Ironside Roasting Co. Facing?

With coffee being such a booming industry in the United States, it’s understandable why hand stamping traceability information just wasn’t as efficient as it had once been. According to research conducted by IBIS World, 

• “The market size of the Coffee Production Industry was expected to increase 2% this year and the revenue brought in by this industry, in 2022, was projected to be about $10.7bn.” 

Imagine trying to keep up with even a fraction of the demand for coffee here in the states all while having to apply date codes, lot codes, batch codes, etc. by hand. Well, Café Mule and Ironside Roasting Co. knew that with them expanding into national distribution territory, hand stamping information was no longer going to be a viable option. Mr. Seeley goes on to say, 

• “We had been expanding into national distribution and hand stamping codes were becoming inefficient for production; plus there was too much error and it was too slow.”

Why are date codes, lot codes, batch codes, and other traceability codes so important? According to an article published by NC Vision about the importance of traceability, 

• “Traceability is vital for quick, efficient and less costly product recalls. Having the proper solution in place can ensure defective or unsafe products are quickly located and removed to protect the safety of the end user and also helps prevent avoidable product recalls.” 

So, you can understand why having too many errors in the coding and marking department would be an issue; the last thing any manufacturer would want to hear is that their creation is harming consumers in any way.

How Did We Nudge Them In The Right Direction? 

You all know that our goal here at Sneed is to make sure that we #KeepCodingSimple by finding the coding solution that best fits your existing workflow, so when Café Mule & Ironside Roasting Co. explained their coding and marking needs, we knew that SNEED-JET® Titan would be the right fit for the job.  

According to Mr. Seeley, 

• “The printer itself was fairly simple to set up and use. The biggest challenge was figuring out how to print on the bottom of all of our different styles of bags, as well as dialing in the timing to get a consistent print.” 
• “However, after completing the setup, the printer has enabled us to ensure complete traceability… this is important as we increase our distribution area. We are now able to implement a tight recall plan and reduce the scope of a potential recall.” 

Improving your product’s traceability isn’t impossible and it won’t break the bank either, contrary to what most consumers would think. In fact, not only do we make it simple to streamline your current workflow, but setting up your new equipment is just as simple; just read about what Colin Seeley has to say,

• “After the initial install and one small issue with one of the ink cartridges, it has been smooth sailing, so much so that we’re now able to produce thousands of prints in a day.” 

Outdated printing processes and technology might be as stubborn as a mule, but we can assure you that they don’t stand a chance against our thermal-inkjet technology. If Café Mule & Ironside Roasting Co. can go from hand stamping info, to using this technology, then we’re sure you can make those changes as well.  

Why risk your product’s traceability by using outdated printing processes?  

Improving your coding and marking processes has never been easier

We match coding solutions that fit your needs, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution 

Like always, we’re #KeepingCodingSimple