Monday, September 12, 2005 2:08 AM Rob van der Meijden

Obsessed by numbers

First day at PDC 2005, first time visiting the US a lot impressions … One off them is the Starbucks coffee numbering system. My current project has some relation with numbers, namely www.burgerservicenummer.nl. So every time people are writing numbers to objects I am interested in the why. Today my Starbucks coffee mug was painted by a number so I ‘m wondering … why. I seem that they use a parallel message system to take an order; messages are separated into simple coffee and the complex coffee. Simple coffee is served directly and you’re charged for the total order. Complex coffee is numbered is a queue and after you paid you can wait for it … and wait … and wait (message queues don’t perform well) and there is you’re coffee out of the queue. I found a bug in this interface … as a customer I want coffee fast and have influence on this process. How to fix: change the pricelist by adding the complexity rate to a coffee item. Besides this minor issue the coffee is great.

Filed under:

# re: Obsessed by numbers

Sunday, September 11, 2005 11:18 PM by Dennis van der Stelt

Hahahaha, because you're writing in English, I understood that burgerservicenummer was Burger Service Number, ie Hamburger! :)

Perhaps citizens can be seen as burgers to our goverment, but I'd like to be seen as something more than a burger ;)

# re: Obsessed by numbers

Monday, September 12, 2005 1:28 AM by Ramon Smits

@Dennis : LOL!

# re: Obsessed by numbers

Monday, September 12, 2005 4:22 AM by Jan Schreuder

At least you get to drink coffee at starbucks. I know them from my time in Malaysia. They serve excellent coffee. Can't wait for them to come to the Netherlands.

# re: Obsessed by numbers

Monday, September 12, 2005 6:45 AM by Rob van der Meijden

@Dennis: LOL … Somebody else had made this same comparison, couldn’t find it on the internet though. Maybe when the fast-food industry is also going to implement a message system they start writing numbers on you’re ……. there you have it.

# re: Obsessed by numbers

Monday, September 12, 2005 10:26 AM by Erwyn van der Meer

@Rob: I also remember having read an analogy between Starbucks and asynchronous messaging/message queuing. I googled this article http://www.eaipatterns.com/ramblings/18_starbucks.html. It has a very nice explanation of the system.

@Jan: Starbucks has made it to France already: http://www.starbucks.fr/. The Dutch domain is not in use by Starbucks yet ;( It has been registered but from the SIDN record it is not clear if Starbucks is behind the registration.

# re: Obsessed by numbers

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 4:10 AM by Mike

@Rob One remark on the burger hotline can be found at: http://groups.google.nl/group/nl.politiek/msg/915b273ba5d838d3?dmode=source&hl=nl

I used to fax my (batch)order to Starbucks including a pick-up time, never failed. Which reminds me, we have to implement something like that soon.

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(required) 
(optional)
(required)