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So you’re ramping up your beverage offer. Got yourself a bank of state-of-the-art coffee brewers, some new cappuccino machines, a 24-head soda fountain with two types of ice. You launched a new coffee menu with a proprietary brew and even a Fair Trade option.
So what’d you do to treat your water? Oh, nothing? Well, good luck with those new offerings; you’ll be dealing with inefficient equipment and funky tastes in no time.
John Notte, coffee and fountain category manager for Sheetz, noticed a change in the coffee in stores near the company’s Altoona, Pa., headquarters. He called the city’s water treatment office and, sure enough, he found out there had been a drop in mineral content. “He started laughing: ‘Of all the things we’ve done, I never thought I’d get a call saying Sheetz coffee tastes different,’ ” Notte says.
Whether it’s in a recipe or a coffee machine, water is a critical ingredient in all consumables. Just as you wouldn’t use subpar beans in your brew or syrup in your soda, the water flowing into your stores should be treated for optimal performance.
But there’s a lot of science involved in a glass of water--let alone the process of treating it. Before determining what treatment system you need, understand what’s happening when the water starts to flow.
