Case study : Celfrost - High-class food service solutions

Celsius Refrigeration Pvt. Ltd, present in the business since 2004, has been invloved in supplying air conditioning and refrigeration solutions to food retail industry to brands like Barista Lavazza, KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Spencers, Niligiris, Reliance Retail, Spinach, SRS Value Bazaars and several others for over five years now. The annual turnover of the company is Rs 50 crore and has been growing at a rate of 25 per cent year-on-year. The company distributes and provides services for some international labels like Bonnet Neve of France for supermarket refrigeration products; Vestfrost, Denmark for freezers; Manitowoc, USA for ice machines; Servend, USA for beverage dispensers; Celfrost Professional for professional cooling products; Waterlogic, UK for water purification & cooling machines; Taylor, USA for soft ice cream machines; and La Cimbali of Italy for professional espresso coffee machines. The company has an expansion plan for foraying into food-service products and solutions for the hospitality industry and fast food restaurant chains.

Case Study

Two years ago, Barista had concerns over the after support to their professional coffee machines which they have been using for years. This was around the time when they were using La Cimbali coffee machines. The company was quite disappointed by the vendors they had hired because of the upsetting services on the key products. Thus, they were looking for an alternate sales & service distributors in India. In fact Barista hired different vendors for different products.

Solution Provided

After Celsius Refrigeration signed up with Cimbali, Barista’s concerns on service were set to rest. The core product coffee machine’s breakdown time was reduced. Happy with the services provided by Celsius, Barista is using the company as a single window for not only the coffee machines but all their refrigeration products, viz., Chest Freezers, Reach In Refrigerators, Confectionary Showcases, Ice Machines, Cold Rooms and Bar Blenders, etc.

 Benefits

This is a win-win combination as it allows the company to create a viable service backbone for maintaining a multiple set of products for its clients. This responsive support structure is also very economical for the clients.

“Our core business is coffee and the fundamental reason for Barista Lavazza to have Celsius Refrigeration partner us is that they allow us to concentrate on our core business. It is a professional organisation that is service responsive and has a fairly wide array of refrigeration and food-service products, which are relevant to a company like ours.”

Sanjay Coutinho, COO & Director, Barista Coffee Company Ltd. 

“The retail outlook for 2010 is certainly positive. Various food retailers have already gone through a huge learning curve and corrections have been set in motion by several of them. The real estate business is also looking positive and the problems in this sector seem to have bottomed out. We are working with various names who have drawn healthy growth plans for 2010.”

Neeraj Seth, Managing Director, Celsius Refrigeration Pvt Ltd