Starbucks Engineering

Last Thursday, when I stopped by Starbucks for my once-a-week indulgence, the barista knew my order. I was shocked, mainly because I was in the drive-thru and he saw me through the little camera in the speaker, with my sunglasses on, and still knew my order (normally I go inside), but also because it's Starbucks. They see lots of people every day and I only go once a week. But, I do have a weird order (green tea latte), so I guess that helps. Anyway, all this reminded me of an article I read, and wrote about, once in college.

As I was glancing through the Wall Street Journal (thanks to some program designed for college students to know what's going on the world, we get WSJ for free), I noticed an article about Starbucks. Since I drink Starbucks coffee, and since I had nothing else to do while waiting on my food, I decided to read the article. It turns out they are making efforts to get people in and out of Starbucks faster, or at least get them their coffee faster. As of now, the average Starbucks customer has to wait about 3 minutes from the time they step into the store until their coffee is ready. Ridiculous.

So, in order to remedy this problem of taking so long, Starbucks has hired engineers to help shave off a few seconds. These engineers are very intelligent people. They figured out a way to make the ice-scooper bigger so that the employees would only have to make a scooping motion once when filling a Venti frap, instead of twice. They called these new-and-improved scoops "volumetric ice scoops." The first big scoop model did not work out as planned; the handle broke off. Luckily, the oh-so-intelligent Starbucks engineers were ready to create a newer scoop, this time with a stronger handle. The new scoops shaved 14 seconds off the preparation time. While the article does not say, I'm sure this improved their sales tremendously.
Another attempt at making things faster for coffee drinkers was the addition of "floaters" to take orders while customers are still in line. Even though floaters cost Starbucks money, they subtracted 20 seconds to service time. Other efforts were new espresso machines, taking off 24 seconds from the time it takes to make a latte.

For those who claim that Starbucks is too expensive, I would like for them to take a moment to think about what they are paying for. Other coffee places probably do not have engineers, floaters, and new espresso machines to make their coffee 58 seconds faster. In those 58 seconds you could do so many things, like find a seat, leave the restaurant, or, if you're quick enough, start your car. And can we really put a price on time?