The Coffee Warehouse
scopeofwork.net43 points by NaOH 4 days ago
43 points by NaOH 4 days ago
You can not efficiently demarcate workloads in a coffee shop the same way you do in a warehouse due many factors including: the lack of transparency in the work done by the work units and the unpredictability of how a single work-unit can impact the entire plant.
The queue management models that work for banks, grocery stores, and warehouses do not fit the highly interdependent plant operations of a coffee shop--Poisson doesn't cut it.
At any given time, there's a good deal of work contained in the "head cache" of the workers (lack of transparency) and orders are (largely) interdependent due to the limited throughput and cornucopia of wait-states of the components that process them.
For a better analog, look at the classic French "brigade de cuisine" system developed by Escoffier and watch videos of high-end restaurants during service.
Pay particular attention to the expediter and notice how there's specialization, redundancy in labor, and semaphoring to manage exceptions, wait-states, and accommodate the entirety of the workload.
None of those strategies can be utilized (at-scale) in a coffee-shop due to vastly different expectations of workload processing timeline, quality, variance, available labor, expected margin, and physical plant size.
A large fast-food restaurant is middle-ground between these extremes.
> ... there's a good deal of work contained in the "head cache" of the workers (lack of transparency)...
Is this true in a Starbucks? Every order goes into the computer before it's made, whether via the app or at the register. Or are you referring to something else more specific, like performing and recording the individual steps in making a speciality coffee?
My time as a barista doing various behind-the-counter jobs was kind of fascinating. I really couldn't do the job as well as other people, I'm not sure if it's because of memory problems from adhd or concussions or what, but I was most effective due to head-cache when I didn't switch from Frappuccinos to hot drinks to till very frequently.
I'd literally forget how to make cold drinks vs hot drinks when I switched, like I'd never done it, until I got into a new flow, and everyone found this to be hilarious, since I'd already been a software person and it was a regression being there.
I took the job because I needed some money and to make social connections, but I mostly just wanted to see if I could do it, and I couldn't.
Since then, I've learned to give myself a bit of grace when switching contexts. If I have a day zoned in on one part of the code, and someone brings up something I worked on a month ago, I'll have to stall for time while I hydrate my cache again. This limitation is somewhat debilitating, since adult life depends on constantly being anxious about invisible obligations and other bullshit that simply aren't in my conscious mind unless I'm specifically grinding on them.
Correct. Unless it's, essentially, a single-step order (black coffee), I'm referring to the "steps to completeness" of any given sub-component of an order--usually specialty drinks or modifications to food prep (heating).
In a truly transparent system, one worker could take the place of another one by knowing which steps of an order have been completed, but that's not how their ticketing system works--nor should it.
In practice, hand-offs are done to other workers only for specialized low-variance duties (register).
Very interesting. I would have intuitively hand-waved the variability of each laborer’s output for those as “within a tolerable amount of time, most of the time” but I see your point that at the busiest times an order for a single, more complex item could cause a significant slowdown in the whole pipeline, especially, as you point out, there is a limited number of staff and workstations.
My information may be out of date because I worked at Starbucks a looong time ago (Frappuccinos were just introduced!), but they absolutely DO make each task measurable, independent and transparent, which is why a well-run Starbucks is way more efficient than almost any local coffee shop I've ever been to.
During a rush, each drink has a discrete series of tasks to be completed, and each worker can do their part without knowing anything about the rest. Take the order, print the receipt, hand it off to the barista, the barista makes each drink one at a time and puts it on the counter.
No head cache, no wait states. The bottleneck is definitely dependent on the barista steaming the right milk ahead of time and pulling the correct number/type of shots, but even a "bad" barista has a pretty straightforward set of tasks.
Unfortunate that the meat of the article is behind a paywall, because the way it is looking at Starbucks resonates with how I (fondly) remember it. I'm not a logistics person, so maybe I'm missing the point you are making!
The specific "transparency" I was commenting on was mid-drink preparation which can not be handed-off in any sort of scalable automated fashion (and that's OK).
Having worked a warehouse job as a teen and done data science consulting for a global restaurant chain, I'm certain Starbucks has done time*motion studies and concluded that the system is "good enough" given the huge variety of floor-plans and other physical plant limitations they need to operate in.
It's also worth pointing out that they recently greatly simplified their menu to improve service speed variance, throughput, and (in theory) quality.
There are absolutely tons of unavoidable wait-states (espresso group-heads, drip coffee filter changes, etc.) in the system that can't be overcome with automation at any sort of economic scale (and that's also OK).
Starbucks once tried replacing some of that with higher-margin single-serving automation (remember the Clover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Equipment_Company and it totally failed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfNoNTjcRbE ).
At Starbucks, I usually just get a cup of black coffee. Often the barista dispenses it as I'm paying, skipping the queue of orders to be made. However, sometimes I get my coffee cup put into the queue. When this happens, starting this year, it seems they'll carry it out to my table. Before that, they'd put it into the queue of orders which could take awhile. It seems partially barista dependent and partially whether they need to rebrew. I've found that asking for "whatever's brewed" doesn't help; they don't want to pick a blend.
Interesting to think about. Local coffee shop baristas are more transparent about what's brewed and enjoy taking the opportunity to recommend a certain roast or origin if I'm not picky. However, their systems fall down when they're unexpectedly busy.
My local cafe that does both coffee and sandwiches (dine-in, to go and catering) is possibly the worst, not taking orders until they feel caught up on the sandwiches. You can end up waiting 10+ minutes just to get a cup of coffee. From a queueing/distribution perspective, they should be taking those orders constantly and letting them pile up so they have more information about what they need to make and they can reduce the mean wait time. On the other hand, their baffling system is charming and the people placing large orders love the attention and spend way more money than I do. :)
The Starbucks locations near me recently replaced their brewed coffee with on-demand coffee machines for each flavor, so I guess we are all destined to wait in the queue for coffee.
If they've pivoted to using those Wawa/7-11-style "latte" dispensers that sound like someone's blowing their nose while keeping the Starbucks pricing, I'm not surprised they're struggling and closing locations.
Those are Clover machines from a company they acquired like 15 years ago. They're very good and in my opinion a big improvement over their traditional batch brew-and-store coffee. There are more roasts available to order, the coffee is guaranteed to be fresh, and most of the time they still "skip queue" and hand you your coffee at the register.
>replaced their brewed coffee with on-demand coffee machines for each flavor
like, k-cup style?
Mobile customers are a kind of second-class citizen for McDonalds, though they have instructed the drive-through salespeople to always lead with "Will you be using the mobile app today?". MCD uses location tracking to only submit the mobile order once you are in range of the store.
Should probably add that in-store customers are third-class citizens; drive-through orders without customization get priority.
> MCD uses location tracking to only submit the mobile order once you are in range of the store
Interesting. Can they be certain that the device from which one places the order, is also taken along for the ride? Some people might order from a separate phone or tablet, which stays at home. Perhaps all of this customer's devices have the McD's app; and any one of them may trigger the order, by approaching the store.
Yeah, if you use the mobile app, your GPS icon lights up until you get there.
Crazy invasive. Guess they want to see how far you drive and what route you get to get there.
It's best to get your order code, leave your phone at home and just pull up and say "I have order EM14..."
I haven't used the McDonalds mobile app in the drive-thru line. Can you clarify the experience? Why would I use the mobile app once I'm already at the drive-thru? For points/payment? Or for ordering as well?
I once ordered ahead using the mobile app at a Starbucks. I got out of my car, only to find the doors locked, as they closed early for some reason. So I had to get BACK in my car, and sit in the drive-thru queue, just to pick up my already-completed drink, which I found infuriating. (actually, what was infuriating was that I really only order at that location to use their restroom, which of course was an option unavailable in the drive-thru for hygenic reasons)
There are some clear parallels to me here from task scheduling algorithms, which I suppose businesses have been reinventing and tweaking for many years. For instance, emergency rooms often use something like priority scheduling, where high priority tasks get scheduled first, but can classically lead to starvation of low-priority tasks such as sitting in the waiting room for a long time with a minor injury. Starbucks wants to maximize throughput while minimizing wait time, but up until now they were just placing all orders into the same FIFO queue and popping them off one at a time? With occasional Shortest-Job-First exceptions (ex. just a black coffee). That seems fairly naive. Something that feels like a slight improvement to me would be having 2 queues (in-person and online, no reason to separate walk-up and drive-through), and alternate popping off from each of them. Or a priority queue? Maybe there is more you could do to maximize throughput, such as batching together food that needs to be heated, or surfacing to the barista how many pending shots need to be pulled for the entire queue so they can just crank out espresso during busy times. Curious if anyone with more experience in the domain has better ideas.
Not directly related, but does anyone know why McDonald's moved away from the "number 1", "number 2", "number 3" ordering style they developed, which significantly reduced the amount of time a typical customer takes to place their order (enabling more turns at the register/ordering screen without preventing customers from making non-numeric-based orders) and moved to their current in-store signage which feels almost explicitly designed to increase order time and customer cognitive load at the register? The main screens over the register offer the eyes no structural guidance on how to scan the contents, so every word and line has to be read individually. The clutter around the words makes recognition more difficult. The sequencing of content on and off of the screens means the desired information is frequently not visible at all and the customer is forced to wait for it to rotate back into visibility.
Upsell opportunity. Remember the number ordering was originally for “extra value meals” that purported to save via bundling. Over the decades the perception of value was lost, hence the move to à la cart, luring consumers with more variety.
The sandwich shop on campus years ago always had a long (20+ people) line, for almost the entire time they were open. There would be a few lulls each day, where you could be one of two or three people waiting, especially during afternoon classes. To reduce line sizes, the sandwich vendors created an app and call-in number for mobile orders, which were prioritized over the counter service. The result was you would be one of two people waiting at the counter during the afternoon lull, while fifty tickets printed and the 2-3 employees solely did online orders. How you prioritize mobile orders might be the biggest factor in keeping/eliminating counter service.
Starbucks might have to worry less about their revenue if they brought customers like me back into the fold by not firing labour organisers, and engaging in meaningful discussions about what being a “partner” in a business means.
How many people are boycotting Starbucks like you because of this?
Realistically this is your personal crusade and while you want Starbucks to change themselves for you, I doubt it would really move the needle at all on the sales slump they're having.
Maybe. All I know is that I used to buy Starbucks quite often, and I don’t any more.
If I divide total transactions by total number of Starbucks, it works out around 2500 visits per week. On my own, I’m not moving the needle. But only 25 people thinking like me is a 1% reduction.
Unless social justice is really seeing a renaissance, it's indeed far more likely that "things are getting expensive and I don't want to pay $6+ for as many cups of coffee as I used to" is the main cause.
The key insight here is the same reason why every internal department service eventually goes to a ticket system - adding queues (and by extension delays) improves efficiency. Resources can be used at 100% capacity ('always more work to do'), you can offer good service to only those who matter (i.e exec VIPs), and you can batch work (pour 2+ cups of brewed coffee at once).
Unfortunately it means that any time you need anything from someone outside your team, it comes with a lead time of '3-5 business days' unless you know the magic words or you raise it up the chain.
And after they improved their operational efficiency, they announced, “Now that we have improved our efficiency, we can lower prices” and they all had a good chuckle and said “see you next quarter, Bob”.
Interesting analysis. If you’re into efficient operations, consider making coffee at home/office and either make your own banana bread (easy and far tastier!) or skip it!
and if you're out and about, go to a local coffee shop - hell, even a local chain (even if you're in seattle -- ESPECIALLY if you're in seattle).
I've never understood what is so special about Starbucks. Visited once, the one near the Canary Wharf underground station. I saw it as pretty much an ordinary cafeteria.
Maybe it is the baristas. I sent my girlfriend to order - I usually do - because I avoid interacting with people trying to sell me anything for the same reason I use adblock while surfing and don't own a TV set. If buying coffee is anything like described in this conversation the experience would probably have been a lot more negative. Seeing someone acting as a friend for tips.
On a same trip we ate in KFC - my first and last time. I was like woah - who on earth would actually choose to eat this crap given about any choice... Compared to that the Starbucks coffee was ok, maybe a little bland.
Of course we didn't order any pint sized sugary things Americans seem to prefer because we enjoy being skinny and looking good.
> ESPECIALLY if you're in seattle
Especially especially if you're at Pike Place. It's not even the real original Starbucks location!
heh. i don't think anyone trying to do anything "efficiently" is anywhere near the market.
Starbucks is MUCH more efficient than any local place. I usually prefer going to (some of) the local places for many reasons, but efficiency isn't one of them.
well, for maximum caffeine efficiency, you have to do things that are not considered socially acceptable in public places. or at least just go to a gas station and buy a 5-hour energy. or trucker speed.
I've got to say, there's nothing more infuriating than standing in front of a register while everyone behind the counter is busy working on online orders that won't get picked up for quite a while, as evidenced by their repeatedly calling out names for the online orders waiting forlornly at the end of the counter.
(this is at a campus Dunkies where there's no drive-through, and I have a hard deadline to start my lecture. If there's no line at the register, and I've got five minutes before class starts in a room down the hall, it shouldn't take a logistical genius to get me a regular coffee in time for class)
The important part of the article is behind a paywall… how is everyone reading the article and commenting? Are they paying? even archive.is doesn’t remove the paywall.
Paywalled halfway through
The app, "SnackPass", faces a similar issue. Coffee shops spend time fulfilling mobile orders, placed in advance to avoid waiting in line, resulting in a delay for in-person orders.
While I was unable to view the entire article (paywalled), I suspect that some kind of priority queue that weights an order's priority by the user's distance to the store may be useful to solve the waiting issue.
When they removed most of the seating and rearranged things in a way that made people understand that sitting there for prolong periods was no longer welcome, and at the same time made their coffee available as nespresso capsules, what was the point of going there anymore? To eat shitty sugar-laden, calorie-heavy desserts? On GLP-1 i can't get a bit of those anymore.