Delivering a steaming cup of handcrafted gourmet coffee is a promise that Lakshmi Dasaka and Chaitanya Chitta, co-founders of SLAY have made to their customers. And it is with this guarantee of quality assurance that the duo is going full-steam ahead with their online and retail coffee bars. Here’s their story…
Slay’s Vision…
At SLAY, we have a simple vision — to grow, roast, grind, brew, pour the best coffee and to bring this best cup of coffee to you, anytime, anywhere. A better cup of coffee (fresher roasts), handcrafted by skilled and certified baristas, a wider variety of choice (Skinny, Vegan etc.) comes to you in a heat-retaining, spill-proof SLAY Case through your favourite food delivery app. Simple! We take pride in being the first company in the world to promise a steaming cup of handcrafted gourmet coffee even if it travels for up to 30 minutes – a promise made possible through a combination of product and packaging innovation.
Origin
This was the beginning of DropKaffe – an online cafe that introduced the city to a good cup of coffee at their desk, at their home, or wherever else they wanted. Our coffee angels carried hot and cold coffees in temperature retaining flasks and poured them into a cup in front of the customer – an experience that many said reminded them of home. But the operational model soon became unfeasible. India’s poster child of online delivery Swiggy had just started their operations from the same neighborhood. The economics of delivery outweighed the cost of coffee, thereby forcing a change in strategy to bottled beverages.4 years and a few pivots later, the “coffee outside the cafe” space was still wide open. Thus, was born SLAY.
Processing
Making gourmet premium coffee affordable and accessible is our philosophy and we intend to do this through innovation through product, supply-chain, packaging and distribution. Sourced from single-origin and high-altitude estates in Chikmagalur, India SLAY coffee beans are of the highest grade and quality. The biggest barrier to a hot cup of coffee crossing the thresholds of a café is packaging. Our proprietary solution, SLAY Case (v1.0), in which the coffee is delivered through delivery partners is a heat-retaining, spill-resistant and tamper proof package. 100% reusable & recyclable, the case is layered with insulation material that can retain temperature for upto 45 minutes. The cuboid structure allows the case to sit easily inside a delivery bag and be carried till the customer without any contact with the beverage inside. After a Barista handcrafts a customer’s coffee, each cup is sealed through heat-based application of a sealing film before it goes into a SLAY Case. Developed after months of R&D on material, structure, aesthetics and hundreds of test deliveries on actual roads and traffic conditions, SLAY Case has created a new packaging form factor for scoring high, both on efficiency and functionality.
Apart from the functionality, each case is a canvas for artists. Every quarter, we crowd source works of art and display them on one side of the case. Our customers love this and reuse the case for decoration and craft projects. Each cup also has a photo and name of the Barista that made the coffee enabling a personal connection, a critical element of any good cafe experience
Product Range
Suited to varied taste and lifestyle preference – Skinny range for calorie-conscious, Vegan range, Black range for purists and SLAY-X for the strong coffee drinkers! We have it all. We also sell packaged products in the E-commerce market which entails SLAY Coffee Beans, and SLAY Coffee Grounds.
We have very recently launched a new product called: SLAY Pour-Over Bags – The Pour Over Brew Bags help one make India’s Strongest Coffee with just 2 ingredients: a cup and some hot water.
Availability
100+ cloud cafés across Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Pune, 3 SLAY2GO kiosks in Bangalore. Online is powered through the REBEL cloud kitchen network. With an aim to establish and make ‘coffee-on-the-go’ behavior mainstream, SLAY has additionally introduced a retail offering, SLAY2GO, which is a hassle-free coffee takeaway experience. It’s built on efficiency (takes up less than 100 sq. ft. of space), is tech-driven (self-service ordering) which helps reimagine the ‘coffee-shop/café’ experience like never before. A cash-less, conversation-less, and wait-less experience is what SLAY2GO is all about. An affordable cup of gourmet coffee will soon be available across malls, high-street, tech parks, and more.
Expansion Plans
Our expansion plans include geographical expansion of our online and retail coffee bars into newer cities and newer areas within the existing cities. As pioneers in innovative coffee products such as SLAY- X, India’s Strongest Coffee, Pour Over Bags, Vegan Coffees etc., we will continue to expand the product line to offer convenient and premium coffee options to our customers.
At scale (and in the near future), our objective is to make SLAY available in the most convenient and shortest time possible. We are working towards enabling 15-20-minute deliveries (for our online customers) made possible through a dense network of outlets in the critical neighborhoods and fulfillment partners.
– Inputs by Lakshmi Dasaka, Co-founder and COO, SLAY
The post This coffee’s out to SLAY! appeared first on TMM.