Keeping drinks standards high in a busy city centre hotel

We supply Crowne Plaza with a vast range of services from installing coffee machines across the conferencing floors to our bulk brew coffee machines both for breakfast diners and in the club lounge, as well as an array of our products within its 250 bedrooms. To help ease busy check-in queues, we created a bespoke coffee cart that can be wheeled into any function or meeting.  

Our expert barista trainers work in partnership with the team, offering menu development and design, regular training and quality checks as well as advice on promotional offers and signage. All to ensure guests get the best quality coffee and service, time and time again. 

Hotels need the right beverage for everyone

Crowne Plaza started to work with Ringtons in November 2021. Their Food & Beverage Director, George Liddle, had worked with Ringtons before, he was keen to work with us again. George knew that we could provide a great service and quality products with minimum fuss.

Machines and products were needed to cover two mezzanine floors, along with a coffee cart for easy transport. It was a massive operation as they have 10 meeting rooms, a ballroom for up to 400 people and 250 bedrooms. The coffee cart was an idea of George’s as coffee machines are set within their working areas now a coffee cart can be moved around to where you need it.

In a recent interview with George, he said:

“The first reason why I wanted a coffee cart is because we host a lot of sports teams and they want to be ultra private in their rooms so in certain meeting rooms and areas we don’t have a coffee facility now we can wheel that in and provide great coffee.”

Crowne Plaza required a bespoke solution

The Crowne Plaza are now proud owners of five Ringtons coffee machines – a mix of La Cimbali S-range – covering the catering service and meeting suite.

The bespoke coffee cart has been such a hit, they are currently talking about putting across the entire Interstate Hotels group. With the meetings and events across hundreds of hotels, there’s so much tea and coffee – it’s endless.

The restaurant orders tea and coffee for banqueting, and the housekeeping team orders all of the tea bags for the rooms. On top of that, they order Ringtons disposable cups which is a lovely touch as it lets customers know that we have a quality product at hand.

We also provide barista training, and if any additional training is required after we are happy to help!

More satisfied guests 

Ringtons have increased the standard of tea and coffee across the entire hotel.

The coffee cart is cleverly used as a queue buster at check-in on busy days. So you get your Fridays and Saturdays which are key days for leisure guests and around 3 or 4pm there’s usually a queue of people checking in. They put the cart next to the reception area and tell guests they can help themselves. That’s a big wow factor.

George knows that having a quality product is important. He said:

“Coffee and tea is big business and to have a quality product like Ringtons in your premise really makes a difference because you get customer feedback like ‘that’s local’ and ‘that’s Ringtons I’ve heard of that’ – and it’s not just people in the North staying at the hotel who recognise Ringtons there’s so many people up and down the country who comment on us having Ringtons. So that word is really spreading.”

Final words from George

“They never let me down. The after-sales service is for us also because with being such a big operation if something is not quite right we want it sorted out straight away and that happens. They don’t just deliver the product, it’s the aftercare service with the training and they buy into what we’re doing and want to achieve.

If my other suppliers were as good as Ringtons I wouldn’t have any issues whatsoever but I will continue to use Ringtons as long as I’m here and also I’m spreading the word.”