How Batch-Producing Espresso-Strength Concentrate Helped HELM Prepare for Gen Con

When you're serving cold coffee drinks to thousands of people in a short period of time, traditional drink-by-drink espresso preparation can quickly become a bottleneck.

That was the challenge facing HELM Coffee Roasters as they prepared for Gen Con, one of North America's largest gaming conventions, with approximately 70,000 attendees.

To keep up with demand, HELM needed a way to produce a large volume of espresso-strength concentrate ahead of service while maintaining speed, consistency, and efficiency.

Batch-Produced Espresso-Strength Concentrate Changes the Workflow

HELM and ColdPerk teamed up to use the ColdPerk Commissary 70 to make espresso-strength concentrate before the event.

With just 2 operators, the team completed 5 production cycles in 5 hours, producing the equivalent of approximately 14,000 espresso-strength shots.

At that production rate, the Commissary 70 could produce enough concentrate to support nearly 20,000 cold coffee drinks during an 8-hour production window.

Instead of producing espresso shot by shot during service, HELM used one shot of concentrate per cold coffee drink, allowing beverages to be assembled quickly using concentrate that was already prepared.

The result was a streamlined workflow where drinks were being prepared faster than customers could pay for them!

Why Batch-Produced Concentrate Matters

The Gen Con experience demonstrates an important advantage of batch-producing espresso-strength concentrate: moving production out of the service window.

By preparing concentrate in advance, operators can reduce the labor and equipment required during peak service while maintaining a consistent product.

This approach can be valuable for large events, cafés, restaurants, festivals, commissaries, and other high-volume beverage operations.

When demand increases, the answer isn't always adding more staff or equipment behind the bar. Sometimes, it's changing when and how espresso-strength concentrate is produced.

For HELM, that meant preparing enough concentrate to support thousands of cold coffee drinks while keeping service fast and efficient.

That's the power of espresso-strength concentrate produced to scale.

Results may vary. Every coffee is different.