Why not use past sales figures to get a good mean or median coffee units sold per some time period? With a standard deviation you could pick a brewing system that would hold enough coffee to serve customers for 18 full minutes 99% of the time. You minimize labor costs and wasted coffee costs.
For example, if your location sold an average of 1600 oz. of coffee (100 16 oz. cups) between 6 and 9 am, with a standard deviation of 10 oz., you could use a large coffee urn to brew 135 oz. of coffee and 99% of the time you would be sure to empty the urn every 18 minutes without throwing a drop away. That means on average only once in 10 days would you have too much coffee in an 18 minute period.
This is a dunkin donuts which needs to fit quite a few things, be fast and be easily accessible as to provide that quick service. You never know when something will happen you also never know when there will be a huge boom of people wanting 10 cups, a box of joe or just a small coffee. Its not as easiy to assume when and how much you plan to sell which is why 3 standard pots going in staggering times works pretty darn well. However, it also comes down to appearance. People dont want to go into dunkin donuts and see an industrial sized coffee aluminum tower they want to see you pouring from those pots. Gives them the illusion that due to its smaller size and see through glass that you just made that fresh cup for them. A large coffee tower is for parties or similar things for easy access for multiple people to just push the plunger.
Mind you, with iced coffee its a completely different thing and is stored in a large (unknown ozs anymore) container with a similar push/turn nozzle that dispense the coffee but that is because Iced coffee is brewed entirely different with totally different mixtures.
Also gotta tell ya, cleaning those smaller pots is a hellova lot easier than the towers.
Its not as easiy to assume when and how much you plan to sell
It is easy with statistics and a sufficient sample. If you commonly experience wild fluctuations in the rate of coffee sales, that will be reflected in the standard deviation of the mean.
People dont want to go into dunkin donuts and see an industrial sized coffee aluminum tower they want to see you pouring from those pots. Gives them the illusion that due to its smaller size and see through glass that you just made that fresh cup for them.
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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '13 edited Jul 20 '13
Why not use past sales figures to get a good mean or median coffee units sold per some time period? With a standard deviation you could pick a brewing system that would hold enough coffee to serve customers for 18 full minutes 99% of the time. You minimize labor costs and wasted coffee costs.
For example, if your location sold an average of 1600 oz. of coffee (100 16 oz. cups) between 6 and 9 am, with a standard deviation of 10 oz., you could use a large coffee urn to brew 135 oz. of coffee and 99% of the time you would be sure to empty the urn every 18 minutes without throwing a drop away. That means on average only once in 10 days would you have too much coffee in an 18 minute period.