Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Briggo Combines Coffee With Robotics And Technology

In an interesting mix of coffee and technology, a local startup, Briggo, has been looking to combine robotics and coffee to create a new specialty coffee brand and retailer. The startup said Tuesday that it has tapped two coffee industry experts, Scott McMartin and Tim Kern, to help it with coffee sourcing, roasting, product quality and customer experience. The startup--which currently has a single location at the Flawn Academic Center at UT Austin--said that McMartin and Kern both join from Starbucks, where they helped the brand grow from just six stores in Seattle to the global brand it is today.

Briggo's coffee centers around robotic, intelligently networked coffee kiosks, which it says provide "robotic precision and consistency" to coffee orders; the kiosks also allow users to order via mobile or the web. The firm, headed by Kevin Nater, also has a significant number of technology veterans in its executive team. Nater was formerly with Citigroup and Dell; and founder and CTO Charles Studor was formerly at Motorola. The company's other executive include veterans of GE, Dell, HP, J&J, RenewData, KLD Energy, Arrow Electronics, IBM, Wayport, and Digby.

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