Washing & Logistics

This page is for drivers and the team at the wash plant. The sanitization loop is counted by Cirqle’s automated scanning gates. Venue staff fill the crates. You make sure those crates of reusable cups are counted on the way out, counted at the washer, and counted again when they are clean.

A reusable cup is only ready to pour again after the clean-gate scan. A crate that looks clean but skipped that gate will still show as dirty or on a truck in Cirqle, and the bar will look short of stock even if the pallet is in the corridor.

The off-site cleaning journey

1. Packing crates at the venue

Staff stack dirty cups into the standard grey transport totes. A usual tote holds about 25 or 50 cups, depending on the tote you were given.

The driver, or the collector, uses the handheld in logistics mode, not in guest-return mode.

1. Check the handheld shows the venue the crate is leaving, not 📍 Unassigned.
2. Scan the pallet or the tote. Include the cups if this site counts loose cups into the crate.
3. Open View Details & All Scans and Discard anything that is not part of this pallet.
4. Tap SEND BATCH as a dispatch. Those cups become In Transit. They are no longer cups the bar can pour.

Do not send a guest refund and a truck pickup as if they were the same button press. The return pays the guest. The dispatch says the crate has left for the wash plant.

2. Arrival at the wash plant

Crates are rolled through an automated scanner tunnel. It counts hundreds of dirty cups in a few seconds. Nobody has to unstack the crates, and nobody squeezes a gun trigger for this step.

That count moves the cups to In Wash. If a crate does not read, stop it. Do not push an unread crate into the washer and tell the venue it was counted. Run it through again, or break it down and scan it with a handheld.

3. Sanitization

Cups are washed at commercial sanitizing temperatures: a wash of 65°C or hotter, and a rinse of about 85°C, then dried completely. The wash plant’s own machines do this. Cirqle does not start the pumps. Cirqle counts the cups that finished the cycle.

Pull out anything cracked or with a dead chip. Those are retired, not put back in the clean stack. See Cup inventory.

4. Clean gate scan

As clean crates leave the tunnel, they pass the exit gate. The system switches each cup back to Available / In Stock. They can be loaded for the next event.

That exit scan is also what Cirqle’s sustainability report counts. One finished wash of a reusable cup is one disposable cup that was not thrown away. Skipping the exit gate under-counts both clean stock and the impact numbers.

When the counts do not match

What you see	What it usually means	What to do
The venue says the pallet left, and the tunnel shows nothing	The dispatch was never sent, or it was sent against the wrong place	Send it from the handheld if the cups are still on screen. Otherwise scan the crate at the plant and file it there.
The tunnel counted fewer cups than the crate card	Cups were stacked too tightly, or the gate is weak	Slow the line and scan again. Do not change the crate card to match a short read.
Cups look clean on the dock and still say In Wash	They skipped the exit gate	Roll the pallet back through the clean gate before it is loaded.

The venue’s job ends when the dispatch is sent and the truck leaves. The wash plant’s job ends when the exit scan has set the cups back to Available / In Stock. If someone asks where a cup was at 10 p.m., the answer is the last scan that was accepted, not a phone guess.