Houghwood Golf Club installed a Canto Touch – and the golfers love it! We spoke to MD Peter Turner and club pro Barry Taylor
‘Golfers are a thrifty lot’, Peter Turner, Managing Director of Houghwood Golf Club, said with a wry smile. ‘They aren’t prepared to drink rubbish but, in the locker room, they refuse point-blank to pay more than £1.50 for a coffee.’ Now, they don’t have to; neither do they have to accept an inferior product…
You see, the club has taken delivery of the UK’s first Canto Touch.
Canto Touch is a different animal altogether from the Karisma that we installed in the club’s bar area, (which is open to visitors as well as golfers). Karisma sits behind the bar, to be admired by many but operated only by the chosen few; whilst Canto Touch is a free-standing, high-volume drinks vending machine that’s sufficiently robust to withstand the demands of the hectic call centre break out area, never mind the rarefied atmosphere of the golf club locker room…
The club’s golf pro, Barry Taylor, is a big fan. ‘It’s like a giant iPad’, he said approvingly. ‘It doesn’t even look like a vending machine’. He’s got a point: featuring a 21 inch, high definition screen with touch-screen interactivity, Canto Touch could be mistaken for a games console! ‘It’s dead easy to make a drink to your own specification and the quality is amazing’, Barry continued. ‘The golfers love it and personally, I think the locker room coffee’s as good as the stuff sold in the bar.’
‘There’s nobody in the world fussier than lady golfers’, Peter added. ‘They’ve really taken to the Canto Touch and, believe me, that’s a major coup!’ (It is a coup: it means Peter doesn’t need to staff the bar for those Saturday-morning-at-seven starts…)
Barry Taylor had hit upon the truth without realising it. You see, at Houghwood, Canto Touch uses the exactly the same coffee blend to deliver exactly the same coffee-shop product as Karisma. The only difference in the finished drink is that Canto Touch uses freeze-dried granulated milk rather than fresh milk. (It tastes great and there a far fewer calories, by the way…)
How can that be possible? Pete Atmore explained: ‘We created Belizzi, a blend of coffee specifically for use with the fully automatic, high-pressure brewers of the type that are virtually unique to N&W. The two machines have no physical resemblance, but Karisma and Canto Touch do share the same DNA! It’s in their Italian heritage to deliver the best espresso based drinks possible and that’s what made us develop the blend.
No wonder they’re calling it ‘the can-do Canto Touch’!
*Need a hot drinks vending machine that’s as robust as it’s cool, for customers who insist on the best? Talk to us about Canto Touch!
** To find out how Karisma is helping to boost Houghwood’s F&B performance, please click here.