Black Mesa Coffee Company, Inc.
With help from NMSBA and NM MEP we were able to save between $10,000 and $15,000 monthly in inventory kept on hand. This was a huge improvement.
Black Mesa Coffee Company is a certified Women’s Business Enterprise, co-founded by Albuquerque native Chris Christy, the company’s sole owner since 2001. Her company employs 43 people and generates over $2.4M in annual sales with two retail stores and a kitchen/bakery, all at the Albuquerque International Sunport. Maintaining inventory, accepting deliveries, preparing food, and moving it to retail locations became a challenge due to airport security requirements and current renovations, which required the bakery to move temporarily to an outbuilding.
Through NMSBA, Black Mesa Coffee Company worked with Matt Moser at New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership to create a manufacturing value stream map to identify opportunities for improvement. Moser and company staff mapped out a new flow of products and employees between the kitchen/bakery and the retail locations inside the airport.
The result was a concise plan minimizing unnecessary transfer and reallocating storage space. In addition, preparation and assembly were assigned to individual locations to ensure that items are kept on-site or moved the shortest distance possible. In-flight, First Class breakfast catering for Delta Airlines was reorganized and streamlined, reducing the assembly space by 70% and assembly time by 65%. The company also moved to a more just-in-time ordering approach rather than keeping large quantities of expensive inventory on hand.