{"id":7426,"date":"2015-05-02T12:21:24","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T16:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=7426"},"modified":"2015-05-02T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-02T16:21:24","slug":"why-no-robots-at-starbucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/02\/why-no-robots-at-starbucks\/","title":{"rendered":"Why no robots at Starbucks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Given the increasing costs of labor here in the U.S. and the sometimes long lines at Starbucks, why hasn&#8217;t the company converted production to robots? A friend has used\u00a0a Swiss-made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00AKY0BCS\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00AKY0BCS&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pgreenspun-20&amp;linkId=WE3DJC6SG3AD2XFR\">Jura<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=pgreenspun-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B00AKY0BCS\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/>\u00a0every day for four years and the machine has never failed. It grinds the beans automatically and then can make espresso, cappuccino, and most\u00a0of the rest of the stuff that people wait for at Starbucks. Presumably a Starbucks outlet would need multiple robots and the machines would need to be beefier than these home\/office versions, but Jura has proved that it can be done.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/qz.com\/134661\/briggo-coffee-army-of-robot-baristas-could-mean-the-end-of-starbucks-as-we-know-it\/\">This article from 2013<\/a> talks about a retail-scale coffee robot, but, unlike the Jura, it seems to be conflated with the idea of using Nespresso-style capsules.<\/p>\n<p>Related: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/01\/opinion\/picking-up-the-tab-for-low-wages.html?_r=0\">The wise white people on\u00a0the New York Times editorial board propose a $12\/hour minimum wage nationwide<\/a>\u00a0(see <a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/11\/milton-friedman-interview\/\">Milton Friedman<\/a> for an explanation for how this is an attack on black workers)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Given the increasing costs of labor here in the U.S. and the sometimes long lines at Starbucks, why hasn&#8217;t the company converted production to robots? A friend has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why no robots at Starbucks? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/02\/why-no-robots-at-starbucks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why no robots at Starbucks? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Given the increasing costs of labor here in the U.S. and the sometimes long lines at Starbucks, why hasn&#8217;t the company converted production to robots? 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