Zondar! Nerds in Food Land

This guy arrived with a printed coffee order at the cafe this morning. Could have been from a spreadsheet, it had around 10 coffees on it. He flashed it, “Can i just leave this with you?” The order was transferred to lids and queued up…

Someone spent some time at a computer to get that order together, they could have just emailed it. The Cafe then printed it on to cup lids, 10 mins later the guy rocks up to collect his tray of coffees for colleagues. Cafe invoices him or even better his company through online payment. Relationship sorted!

Mornings when you get to work and don’t have time to pick up your coffee on the way. At your computer, fired up your browser, checked email. You could duck out to get a coffee but its around 9am, your favourite cafe will be clogged with punters. It would be at least 9:30 by the time you’ve slinked back in, coffee & fruit toast in hand…

If you could place that order from your desk, the cafe could either run it up to you or you could shave that queue waiting time off the coffee run.

The buts :

• The $5 order isn’t enough for the cafe to hire an extra runner (minimum charge?)
• Coffee might be cold when you get there (Customer enters pick up time?)
• Cafe has to have computer and wireless hooked up (Who doesn’t have that stuff already?)
• Ordering the coffee online could be more hassle than

Would it give some cafes a competitive edge over others? Are there potential gains in revenue enough to pay for the system? It does have possibilities for expansion into office catering…