Business - Small Business - Success Stories

Saturnbird

Saturnbird is brewing something special with Mac.

Saturnbird is a coffee company based in Shanghai, China, whose innovative products and design focus has earned them massive growth, and a devoted fanbase. Their patented extraction process is shaking up the coffee industry, and has helped them scale from a single coffee shop to a globally-popular company delivering flavor to over 10 million customers online.

Saturnbird attributes this success to their dynamic workforce — which has increased to 230 employees — and to the Apple devices and software they rely on. The company focuses on attracting and nurturing top talent by enhancing engagement and the employee experience at every interaction. They say choosing Mac has made a huge difference by increasing creativity and productivity.

All development happens on Mac, from conception to final product — employees rely on Mac for exceptional power and speed. And with all-day battery life*, product managers can stay mobile within the office and as they travel. The team also utilizes Feishu, a comprehensive collaboration app on Mac, and makes the most of Apple’s built-in apps like Freeform, Keynote, and Pages for productivity — enabling them to seamlessly pick up their workflows on iPhone and iPad, whenever needed.

The design team uses Mac to make everything from graphics to award-winning packaging design. They prefer Mac because of its compatibility with industry-leading creativity apps, like Cinema 4D and Rhino, and its ability to power through heavy tasks like 3D rendering. ”Mac makes the pro workflow smooth and easy” says Lian Wang, co‑founder.

Mac has proven to be popular for users and IT alike. 82% of Saturnbird’s employees choose to work on it. With streamlined management and security features, Mac enables the IT manager to address all company IT support needs single-handedly. Since adoption, Saturnbird has experienced zero security incidents on their devices. And by using built-in features such as FileVault and XProtect, they save on not having to manage 3rd party security add-ons.

Trusted by members from every team, Apple technology has become core to Saturnbird’s flavorful culture. And with each cup of delicious, aromatic coffee, customers get to savor the benefits.

* Battery life varies by use and configuration.

Señor Sisig

A recipe for culinary success with Apple.

Childhood friends, Evan Kidera and Gil Payumo, share a passion for bringing authentic flavor to their community. They brought it to life when they launched their first Filipino-Mexican fusion food truck, combining tacos and burritos with the signature flavors of sisig — a rustic Filipino dish with a family twist from Gil’s childhood. Starting with one food truck, Señor Sisig has grown to four trucks and three restaurants across the San Francisco Bay Area.

As the business grew, so did opportunities to increase their operational efficiency. To increase productivity, and maintain consistency across all locations, they centralized food preparations to a single commercial kitchen and built a technology infrastructure with Apple products and services.

Kitchen managers use Mac and iPad with the Foodager app to monitor all incoming ingredients and distribute cooked food across all locations. For training and onboarding, they turn to the Opus Training app on iPad to share content like recipe books and videos on how to roll the burritos “the Sisig” way. And Slack on iPhone helps their mobile workforce stay connected for instant troubleshooting and seamless communication.

To scale community engagement and awareness, the team creates and shares unique, home-grown content shot on iPhone to keep customers updated on everything from daily specials to collaborations with local artists. They also use Apple Business Connect to build their customer base. “We use Apple Business Connect so people can use our place cards in Apple Maps to find us, as well as order their food and complete their payment,” says Evan.

To streamline their IT operation, they use Apple Business Essentials. Features like zero touch deployment ensures that all devices are ready to be used right out of the box — no matter where they’re located. And for help desk support, AppleCare+ for Business Essentials empowers employees to instantly request repairs and troubleshoot around the clock — reducing downtime and increasing productivity.

Señor Sisig is bringing truly authentic flavors to more people in their community. And with Apple hardware and services, Gil and Evan have all the ingredients they need to serve the best burritos in town.

Dance

This e-bike subscription company uses Swift to crack the code for speedy growth.

Dance is an e-bike subscription service founded by Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, Alexander Ljung, and Christian Springub in 2020. Their goal is to give people friction-free access to electric bikes — making cities more about people and the planet and less about cars. To fulfill the company’s mission, they needed a platform that offered flexibility and security in order to scale. That’s why they decided to use Apple products from day one.

At the head office in Germany, every employee uses Mac to support collaboration and productivity. Designers and developers work on Mac to create and test prototypes. In the workshop, mechanics use iPhone to access an e-bike’s service history by scanning a QR code attached to each frame. And everyone uses iPad to manage time sheets and shifts, simplifying workflows. Even Dance‘s customers can use iPhone, to contact the maintenance team and schedule roadside repairs directly through the app.

When Dance employees needed a custom app to streamline workflows for their mechanics and operations team, they built it in Swift, Apple‘s powerful and intuitive programming language. Nynke de Boer, one of Dance’s early employees, was able to learn Swift in a few weeks and create the custom iOS app in a matter of months. Dance also used Swift to build an app for customers to manage their accounts and view real-time journey data from their e-bikes. Swift makes it easy to continuously update the app to meet new business needs as the company grows.

Dance has rolled out its e-bikes in five major European cities to date. It relies on the built-in security of every Apple device to protect company and customer data as it continues to scale quickly. Staying nimble with the most powerful and flexible tools in an evolving work environment is why Dance chose Apple. And its business only continues to pick up speed, reaching new riders every single day.