The name ‘Hermanos’ comes from its founding brothers Victor and Santiago Gamboa. Together with business partner Adnan Millwala, the trio sought to bring their passion for Colombian specialty coffees and traditional roasting practices to the UK market.
“Hermanos is a celebration of the diversity, culture and craft of specialty coffee from Colombia”, Santiago told us. The passion that built the brand grew from “meeting the farmers and getting inspiration from the different families that all work together. We wanted to work with them and bring the values of the coffee community in Colombia back to the UK.”
Their customers responded with unbridled enthusiasm. What started out as a pop-up coffee shop in Walthamstow has, in the space of six years, flourished into a thriving coffee empire encompassing multiple locations throughout London, as well as B2B retail and e-commerce operations.
We talked to the founding trio about how Square has helped them on their journey.
Key challenges and how Square offered solutions
- Flexibility and scalability: Ambition has been a defining feature of Hermanos’ business plan. The trio knew that they wanted to scale their operations quickly and needed a payments system with the versatility to keep up with their growth. Its solutions have allowed them to pursue multiple commercial avenues on and off-site. “The flexibility Square gives us is enormous”, Santiago told us, “because we are able to use it at events and festivals as well as in our coffee shops.”
- Expense and cash flow: In order for Hermanos to grow its operations, the trio knew that it would need to reduce unnecessary operational costs while ensuring sufficient cash flow for the capital investments that come with growth. Square’s reasonable transaction fees and real-time analytics helped Hermanos to reduce expenditure and drive down wasteful spending in order to boost liquidity and fuel growth.
- Diversification: Hermanos has grown substantially due to its multifaceted approach to coffee retail. As well as focusing on the in-store coffee experience, Hermanos has opened itself up to B2B sales to other cafes and restaurants, pop-ups at events and festivals, and direct consumer sales via its ecommerce website and subscription service. Square’s multifaceted suite of business solutions has helped Hermanos to engage its target market on multiple fronts.
- Rebranding and aesthetic: Hermanos’ adoption of Square coincided with a complete rebrand across multiple sites. Santiago, Victor and Adnan didn’t just want an effective POS – they wanted a POS that was aligned with the aesthetic vision for the company’s rebrand. “It’s very sleek hardware”, Santiago said. “It looks very good. It looks very smart. It aligns with the brand and how we want to look and feel as well.”
Hermanos’ implementation and training journey
At Hermanos, the coffee comes first. The idea that every customer should get the same quality of coffee, regardless of what time of the day they come, is key to the brand’s service ethos. Therefore, the team emphatically states that staff training and having the right equipment are the mechanisms employed to create an outstanding customer experience.
Fortunately, the team at Hermanos had no problems adapting to the intuitive interface of Square’s hardware and software solutions. Designed for ‘pick up and play’ operations with minimal staff training, Square puts the features and functionalities staff need in the palm of their hands, with customisable permissions for staff at different levels.
Square’s impact on business operations
The care, passion and sense of family that the trio has imported from the Colombian coffee industry is evident in every facet of Hermanos’ operations – an approach that has clearly been embraced by London’s coffee lovers. In just a few short years, the brand has grown to encompass nine locations throughout the capital, with more on the way. Not to mention the brand’s prosperous wholesale and ecommerce operations.
Let’s take a look at how Square has helped Hermanos to facilitate this phenomenal business growth.
Huge savings on processing fees
Unnecessary operational costs are anathema to healthy business growth. It was not until Hermanos started using Square that the trio realised just how much of their profit margins were consumed by transaction fees under its previous payment partner.
Since implementing Square’s suite of business solutions, the team has saved over £10,000 on transaction fees alone.
Improved customer experience
When asked what ‘Hermanos’ means to their customers, the trio replied: “Having a little bit of Colombia in their hands. We need them to see the passion that we put into our coffee, our products and the customer service that they get.”
The key to this outstanding customer service lies in both quality and speed. Staff are trained to deliver consistently excellent coffee in every cup. However, they are also trained to deliver outstanding service quickly, keeping waiting times down and queues moving on busy days.
Square’s simple and intuitive POS solutions make both service and payments quick, easy and fluid. From fast and smooth checkout operations to contactless payments, Square minimises the administrative workload of Hermanos baristas, allowing them to focus more on delivering cups of perfection time after time.
Seamless scalability
Since arriving in the UK, Hermanos has pursued an ambitious and multifaceted growth strategy. Working with investors, Victor, Santiago and Adnan have even more ambitious growth plans scheduled for the near future, including moving into new markets across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. This requires not only capital investment, but agile operations to maximise profit margins, reduce friction that could impact customer service, and send positive signals to prospective investors.
Since the team began using Square in January 2023, it has not only saved money but improved efficiency, allowing the team to track revenues and workflows across multiple sites, wholesale and ecommerce operations.
Improved analytics and reduced wastage
Roasting on demand is the key to Hermanos’ outstanding quality, variety and freshness. However, this model carries with it certain risks.
Shrewd inventory management is necessary to maintain sufficient levels of stock across multiple coffee shop sites, wholesale and ecommerce operations without producing so much as to invite profit-sapping wastage. Victor explains: “As specialty coffee roasters, our objective is to have fresh coffee across our sites. [Square’s data] helps us to do that. The analytics tools give us an insight as to when to roast and how much coffee we need to roast. So then all the coffee that we have in the shops gets to the shops freshly roasted, and wastage is minimised. “The dashboard is my favourite app”, he adds. “That’s one of the things that I check every day before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning.”
Square’s dashboard makes sophisticated analytics easy to interpret, allowing the team a top-down view of product and store performance across all locations. This data continues to guide and inform Hermanos’ ongoing operational strategy as the brand grows from strength to strength.
Have you ever wondered how much you could save on transaction fees by switching to a new payment partner? Do you worry about whether your operations are as efficient as they could be? Are your ambitions hampered by barriers to growth that seem unassailable?
Why not join the thousands of businesses like Hermanos that have cut costs and unleashed their potential with Square? [Get in touch with our team today]
