Starbucks is having problems. Again. At this time, customers in California believe they have not enough milk in their latte. IMHO (personal opinion of the author), whatever has been written about Starbucks it’s more popular than all other coffee houses in America put together.
Any American shopping mall is full of coffee establishments, but half the tables there are usually free. Only at Starbucks you may see a line of people from opening morning hours till late at night before closing. It’s coffee culture and “spiritual braces”.
You can only manage what you can measure
Still, there’s actually a real problem remaining. Underfill of milk is the most common complaint of customers at gas stations. You will be surprised how easily it can be solved. Milk actually is poured badly because the coaffee machines aren’t being washed properly.
Gas station staff is obliged to wash a coffee or espresso machine daily. The machines usually send a signal that it’s time to do so on their own. If business processes at the gas station are set properly, the washing time comes at a time when there’s a calm period in station’s schedule. If there is a stream of visitors, it is too great a temptation to press the “skip” button. If you do so once the immediate negative changes will not follow. But the problem tends to accumulate. Yes, the qualification level of personnel whether it’s in California or in the Pskov region is the same. If it is possible no to do something somewhere, it won’t be done.
Lamenting about the imperfection of human nature is useless and futile, police-like measures are not effective, too. Solution – telemetry, two-way remote monitoring of coffee machines. The problem of “to wash or not to wash” is solved once and for all. At the same time the problem with the control of visitors is elegantly solved – have they poured the coffee they actually purchased, are they trying to cheat? For this cases the perfect solution for drinks sales are the bar codes.
The head of the station can remotely control every coffee machine or a group of coffee machines instantly adjusting recipes, obtaining statistics on drinks, watching out for maintenance, etc. These are the “big data”, which give the ability to manage sales on the basis of accurate measurements.
For example, we had a theory that with the beginning of Lent the black coffee sales should increase since milk is not a Lenten product. We compared the data for the North-West the week before the Lent and the first week after its start. Theory has not been confirmed, the sales of all coffee beverages rose from 15% to 30%, cappuccino is still the leader. So introducing special Lenten menu at all the stations, most likely, will not take place. Travelers and drivers might rightly considered themselves free from the Lent.
Conquest of Italy
Maybe this is my personal preference, but I like how Starbucks solves trivial business problems, not sparing the time and efforts for it, waiting for the right moment.
For example, for 30 years they’ve been planning to come on the coffee market in Italy. For those who are in the know – it is a revolution, a tectonic shift. In Italy, 90% of the market belngs to small family coffee houses. US gallons of coffee and a tiny cup of espresso are the two poles of the coffee world.
Now the company announces that the coming to Italy will take place in 2017. It’s not just that American cultural codes proudly march around the world, along with Hollywood films. Now the assortment of leading producers have coffee machines which are, in fact, the machine guns, but completely simulate the manual preparation of coffee. For example, as the one on this picture. (WMF espresso)
To such a coffee machine it is useful to attach telemetry devices which exclude minor bugs, errors and influence of the human factor.
Business models based on thread-automated sales of coffee have a future, even in a coffee country like Italy. So what can we say about the sales of coffee at the gas station in the country with not an Italian coffee mentality and just emerging coffee traditions!
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