The Storchen Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland was one of our very first customers in Europe, and the Barchetta Bar serves Ripples designs to customers every day. We recently had a chance to catch up with General Manager Jorg Arnold.
Check out what Jorg thinks about Ripples, and its impact on his marketing efforts his guests’ reactions in excerpts from our chat, below.
Why did you choose Ripples for your Hotel?
“I was restructuring my hotel for 2017 I thought it would be a fantastic gadget to have for our new coffee bar. I thought right off that it would be a great idea.”
Creating a Buzz
“Once the hotel was remodeled we had a press opening and invited 40 journalists. As part of the tour we took them to the coffee bar and showed them these great Ripple cappuccinos.”
“One paper published a story about our Ripple Maker. That prompted people to come visit and say ‘What is this?’ ‘How can we get this cappuccino?’ Event planners came to us as well.”
Local Brand Partnerships
“We hosted an influencer event sponsored by a very famous cosmetics company. The hostess worked with us to have every single woman receive her onw picture on a cappuccino. They were all crazy about it. It was a big huge success.”
Making “Ripples” on Social Media
“It’s important to capitalize on your Ripple Maker marketing to get the most out of it. It’s important to use social media.
Just lately we had a young couple here from India. A Bollywood couple. A very famous couple. We printed their selfie as a surprise, they took a picture of the drink, posted it [and tagged us] and within no time it had 120,000 likes.”
What do your guests think of Ripples?
“Everyone is surprised when their cappuccino says ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Welcome’ or has their own picture on top.”
“’Good Morning’, ‘Have a nice day’, and printed selfies or pictures are always a huge success. I like the Ripple prints with phrases because people are surprised to receive latte art with text. Baristas [on their own] can do a nice design but not writing.”
“We have people coming to experience Ripples and just see how it really works. It’s a nice thing to show a friend. People come to the Storchen and say hey let’s have a nice cappuccino and they surprise each other with the messages on top.”
What do your baristas think about the Ripple Maker?
“For the baristas it’s a lot of fun. They can do incredible cappuccino with Ripples—they have a lot of fun surprising guests.
[The design is] up to the barista. He decides when he wants to surprise somebody. Someone comes in and orders a cappuccino and he tries to surprise them. Our baristas are becoming like bartenders. If you’re a big star as a barista people come back to see you. It’s a win win. It gives them a good feeling too because Ripples let’s the baristas surprise our guests.”
Tages Anzeiger interviewed The Storchen team about Ripples for their newspaper, Cappuccino mit Selfie gefällig? Das Hotel Storchen kann Bilder in Kaffeeschaum drucken. The team discusses how they choose their designs:
„Da wir in Zürich leben und arbeiten und Zürich gerne feiert, wie zum Beispiel letzte Woche das Sechseläuten, haben wir natürlich einen Böögg hinaufdrucken können, oder einen Schneemann – letzte Woche hat es geschneit, und das freut die Gäste, wir haben ab 7 Uhr morgens geöffnet und können den „Morning Blues“ vertreiben mit den fröhlichen Motiven.”
“As we live and work in Zurich and Zurich loves to celebrate, such as the Sechseläuten last week, so we printed a Böögg on the drinks, a snowman – last week it snowed. It makes the guests happy; we are open from 7am in the morning and can help get rid of the “morning blues” with the cheerful printed images.”
