As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to rise and the need for hygiene and social distancing garners centre stage, the Bengaluru based tea chain announces the launch of its contactless vending machines business.

After successfully launching the first tea cafe chain, Chai Point is betting big on the business of contactless vending machines. Through its vending business, Chai Point aims to cover both beverages and packaged snacks. As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to rise and the need for hygiene and social distancing garners centre stage, the Bengaluru based tea chain announces the launch of its contactless vending machines business.

Chai Point entered the vending segment back in 2017 with the launch of its boxC.in, an IoT enabled tea/coffee vending machine, for its corporate customers. boxC.in is now a fully automatic Android machine with payment wallets integrated serving a range of white collars’ beverages and thereby contributing close to 38 per cent to the total business revenues as per the pre-COVID time frame data. 

Chai Point, with 175 stores across 13 cities, is one of few brands which has emerged unscathed during the pandemic. The company has seen an uptick in its delivery business and is witnessing a slow but gradually increasing footfall back in the stores. While on storefront, the company expects the business to show normalcy by November, they are working on expanding their vending machine business in a big way. 

boxC is currently present at more than 4,000 locations. Encouraged by the success of its boxC range, the company has now launched an Android enabled contactless vending machine dispensing western coffee with beans grinding mechanism. The new machines come fitted with sim cards and are remote monitored by Network operating centre (NOC). 

Chai Point aims at tapping into corporate and large public spaces like hospitals, stations, hotels for offering a range of coffee and packaged snacks on pay as you go basis. The machine allows contactless vending through a mobile-based web interface. Furthermore, Chai Point has enabled access to high-quality single-origin Rain Forest Alliance certified beans for these new range of boxC Coffee machines. 

“Our Vending as a Service” (VAAS) channel powered by boxC machines, are already amongst the largest sellers of filter coffee. With Bean to Cup as a new model, we want our customers to be able to access coffee right from Americano to Latte to Cappuccino,” said Amuleek Singh Bijral, Co-founder CEO, Chai Point.

Currently, coffee and snack machines are live at more than 150 locations. Even during the current times when most offices are closed or operating at a very low capacity, Chai Point continues to deploy its vending machines by differentiating foremostly through a contactless vending capability. Chai Point expects this to grow to more than 500 locations in the next one year. 

The Hybrid Payment Model 

For ease of payments, Chai Point is introducing a flexi payment model with the launch of vending machines. Leveraging it's IOT capabilities, companies can now introduce a payment model where the coffee or tea payment can be jointly made by its employees and the companies themselves. 

This is how it will work, an enterprise will pay either for a fixed number of cups basis their consumption pattern, once that quota is exhausted, a subsidised payment option will be available for the employees to continue to enjoy their favourite cuppa. The other option is that for each cup, cost is borne by both the Company and its employees.