Digital hospitality platform Ordermentum has launched a Coffee Index to empower small and medium-sized enterprises with real time data.

The Coffee Index is a real-time indicator of the volume and price of wholesale specialty coffee sold nationally across Australia. The index analyses blends, single origin and decaf coffee beans. It is based on business-to-business orders from café to supplier, and is calculated weekly.

The Coffee Index provides live, meaningful insights, which allows suppliers to better understand the week-to-week ups and downs in the context of the wider market.

For example, coffee traders take the biggest hit during the July school holidays as opposed to the Christmas school holiday, and over the last 12 months the amount of coffee bought by cafés in Australia has increased by 3.5 per cent.

These are the kind of trend reports that Ordermentum are able to provide to Australian coffee roasters and wholesalers, in real time, through a global Coffee Index.

The data has been curated from 12 per cent of all specialty coffee roasters across Australia who are using the Ordermentum platform, which equates to over 10 per cent of all coffee traded in Australia.

Ordermentum’s goal is to make Australian businesses market leaders in technology. The Coffee Index and the data sitting behind it enable Ordermentum to help roasters with their consumption forecasting and predictive ordering.

“We’re in a unique position where we are able to take the 55,000 orders through our platform each month and turn the data into insights that can really help a lot of businesses,” says Ordermentum CEO Andrew Low. “Smaller coffee roasters will almost never have that much data, so being able to provide these insights will have a big impact on the industry.”

Already, Australian roasters such as Ona Coffee, Little Marionette, Double Roasters, Proud Mary and Gabriel are enjoying the key benefits of the Coffee Index including insights for:

Quality: the index addresses quality by assisting in managing coffee freshness. Best drunk between four to 14 days from roast, a more consistent production plan will limit the variation in roast dates the retailer receives, which ultimately results in happy consumers.

Customer service: the demand forecast (orders placed) is moderated by market movements for holidays and days of the week trading variances to ensure there is always stock available.

Commercial viability of the wholesalers: more accurate demand forecasts allow roasters to hold lower par levels for stock, improving working capital and reducing wastage. Ordermentum intends to help small businesses, such as a roaster who burnt $5,000 worth of coffee because they planned their consumption around public holidays incorrectly.

“Most roasters know the obvious public holiday dates, but we’ve been really impressed by the Ordermentum Coffee Index being able to provide more perceptive insights, like when two trends collide in certain years, and which holidays also experience a slump before or after as well as during,” says Ona Coffee Owner Sasa Sestic.

“That information completely transforms the way we forecast, and will make us a much more efficient business.”

Ordermentum are developing data that, up until today, has been reserved only for the grocery sector and multinational manufacturers via expensive scan sales reports. Ordermentum anticipates to open the data to open to wider markets, including a specialty Bread Index, a Milk Index, and wider hospitality index later in 2018.

“The thriving specialty coffee industry in Australia is built on people who are in it for the love of it, so we’re thrilled to be able to support our passionate roasters in their business growth,” Andrew says.

For more information, visit www.ordermentum.com.au.