*Links to our detailed case study and an interview with one of our event baristas is available at the end of the article

1,200 shots. 400 per day. Up to 170 in an hour.

At the 2025 Singapore Grand Prix, Caffeine Solutions took coffee performance to the limit at the Formula 1 Paddock Club. Beyond fuelling guests through three adrenaline-charged days, our team turned the event into a live experiment — testing how telemetry and data tracking could transform consistency under extreme conditions.

why we did it

Even in the best cafés, coffee quality isn’t always within human control. Factors like temperature shifts, grinder behaviour or equipment drift can make a perfect espresso one day and an inconsistent one the next.

Our goal was to see if real-time telemetry could:

Detect and diagnose performance issues immediately
Highlight workflow inefficiencies during high-volume service
Help baristas use data to react faster, calibrate smarter and maintain quality

To push this further, we challenged three senior-level baristas with different levels of telemetry experience — from none at all to expert — and tracked both their performance and the data in parallel.

What We Found

Within hours, telemetry revealed issues no human could have caught in real time:

Shot time deviation (10–16%) – these lapses could be attributed to inconsistent micro habits of baristas which seem minor, but realistically, also contribute to shot time deviation
Machine limitations – the machine’s temperature was inconsistent due to the extreme rush which was flagged by data to trigger immediate investigation
Environmental impact – 33 °C heat reduced shot precision until on-site corrections were made

The Three-day Experiment

Day 1: 394 shots pulled. Data only — no human intervention. 72.6% met recipe standards.
Day 2: 388 shots. Despite an equipment incident, 77.1% still met the recipe as telemetry guided real-time fixes.
Day 3: 436 shots. With insights from earlier days and leadership from our telemetry-savvy barista, quality peaked — 82.6% met recipe targets and more than half were perfect, falling +/- 1 second within target shot timing.

The diagram depicts the upward trend and improvement of shots meeting the specified recipe over the 3-days, as the team used data to track and resolve operational issues in order to maintain consistency and overall coffee quality.

Across just three days, recipe accuracy improved by 10%. Using live data, up to 70% in totality of potential quality loss was recovered before it became waste — proof that information beats intuition.

Why It Matters

Every café battles inconsistency. Data doesn’t replace skill, but it gives teams visibility and control — distinguishing between operator error and machine behaviour. That means:

Faster responses and less downtime
Reduced waste and repair costs
Concrete diagnostics for suppliers and service partners
The potential to scale consistency across multiple outlets

In short: telemetry takes the guesswork out of coffee, and keeps you on track.

Curious to know more?

Read more about our findings in our detailed case study, or see through our barista’s eyes in a post-event interview.

We’re ready to show you how telemetry and data can really change up the game in your cafe.
Book a demo and explore how real-time insights can improve both your workflow and your brew.

Brewing Under Pressure: How coffee data made us pull 150 shots per hour at the f1 singapore night race 2025