Coffee and Its Complements: How One Stack of Newspapers Keeps a Business Afloat

It's been five days since I sat down at the Community Coffee shop located within my college's campus, and I still can't get what I overheard out of my head.

A group of people passed who noticed that CC's distributes free issues of The New York Times -- of course, all with the intention of drawing more people to buy more coffee.

One person in the group said that they went to the coffee shop every day to pick up a copy of the newspaper. Initially I thought this was pretty neat -- finally, I can find a copy of actual newsprint, which is much more appealing to me than online newspapers. I spend enough time online writing papers, doing research, etc. that I try to minimize the time my eyes are exposed to the horrendous blue waves emitted by the screen of my Dell laptop. But it took me a day or two of pondering increasing my visits to the coffee shop specifically to get that newspaper that (1) I would look pretty bad for not buying anything, which was alright with me and (2) I would probably be tempted to buy more coffee, which I already have a problem with at the moment.

More and more since taking this basic Economics class I've been thinking about how small changes can lead to big results -- something which the book by Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point, covers through numerous examples, such as the way a couple of mavens/hipsters can wear Hush Puppies and suddenly those shoes are scattered on runways and on the streets. In the case of CC's, these free newspapers seem to cost the place a few bucks, but probably not enough to outweigh their profits for the amount of people who pick them up. Not a lot of people read newspapers, and I didn't even notice they were there until I heard someone talking about them. When that person mentioned the newspapers, I and a couple other newspaper lovers picked up on it and were more likely to go back to CC's again to pick them up. Perhaps CC's is catching on to a small group of newspaper loyals. Even though most people don't read newspapers, a small percentage do, and CC's capitalizes on essentially the only place on campus where free newspapers outside of The Maroon are available.

What I make of all this is that although it's a pretty tricky thing to do, I have to applaud them for it. That one change in scene -- adding a newspaper stand -- probably draws in a small group of loyal customers who come to get the newspaper, and, probably coffee. After all most people have a habit of drinking coffee with their newspapers each morning, or, nowadays with their online, tweet-like versions of it -- snippets of daily events, watered down to satiate our small attention spans. It baffles me considering how that one detail in CC's probably gives them a whole base of customers who reliably buy coffee on a regular basis, without having to spend much money (the money they spend on the newspapers is probably outweighed by the coffee people buy to go with their newspapers, as well as the fact that there are usually lines outside the shop at low-energy times of the day like 3pm).

So, obviously CC's is doing itself a grand favor by offering free newspapers outside of it's non-existent doors. So how are we supposed to benefit from this discovery? If you're trying to run a business, organization, or perhaps a non-profit in which you're trying to gain profit/support, look for the one detail that will keep people coming back. Do you have great customer service skills? Do the laptops you sell come with an option to decrease the backlighting, so users do not burn their eyeballs reading online newspapers? I am sure that many organizations have that one small improvement that they can make that will turn everything around -- you just have to look for it. As for myself, as I try for what is probably the fourth time to bring together a group of people interested in poetry open-mics and writing workshops, I think to myself: What do writers on Loyola's campus want in a writing-centered group, and what will keep them interested in that group, i.e. participating and collaborating in what would hopefully be an inspirational and creative conglomeration of Loyola word-nerds? Maybe I have to spend hours creating flyers and hand-outs again, throwing them around campus frantically like someone losing their mind. Or perhaps, I just need to add newspapers.

Coffee and Robotics

     This past December Dave Gilbert of CNN posted an article titled "How rodents and coffee could shape future space robots," and it immediately caught my eye. Who knew that coffee and space robots could be used in the same sentence (or robots for that matter)? As a result of research by Cornell, the University of Chicago, iRobot Corp and Liquidia, robotic grippers can now be made with just a latex balloon and coffee granules.

     At The Neutral Ground Coffeehouse, coffee beans are ground up into loose power and then packed into a “puck” so that pressurized water can be pushed through to make a concentrated espresso shot. Similarly, vacuum sealed coffee is like a brick until it is opened and the grains come loose. Researchers undoubtedly have realized the benefits of a material that can be loose and conform to the shape of an object it grasps, but can also become tightly packed when it pinches and holds onto something. As 2010 "jamming gripper" researcher Heinrich Jaeger notes, the coffee-based gripper doesn't require a lot of surface area to hold onto something, either.

     This new technology is proving to have more uses than originally thought, according to co-founder of the UK's Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) and robotics expert Alan Winfield. It is possible that these coffee-grip robots can be used to collect samples on rover missions in outer space. Oftentimes robots need to collect and analyze rock samples found on planets, and the soft gripper works to grasp these samples while conforming to the object and not damaging them.

     As for the "rodent" side to this story, teams at the UK's Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) are working to develop the "Shrewbot," in honor of the Etruscan shrew, to determine if a robot can use sense to discover its surroundings without vision as animals like mice and shrews do. The robot is equipped with artifical whiskers like those of its furry comrades. Team leader Martin Pearson mentions that this work is mainly to further biologists' understanding of animals' sensory functions. However, he also notes that this kind of robotic application could be used to explore smoke-filled rooms, inspect pipelines in deep ocean waters, and possibly even wander planets where there is limited vision because of lack of light or a thick atmosphere. Alan Winfield notes that these whiskers take in information at the root -- in theory they could be damaged at the tips if they brush against rock or other materials, but still function properly.

     This is a great development for robotics. We now have grippers made using just a balloon and coffee grinds that could allow us to collect information on samples in space that may have otherwise been crushed by a less gentle gripping mechanism. And the "Shrewbot" uses whiskers that could have interesting applications in murky places where vision might not be that useful. Although these applications are still in development, I find the multitude of possibilities for them very promising. There is a chance that one day, planets with otherwise heavy atmospheres could be explored, information could be mined by whiskers instead of cameras, and fragile samples can be collected by a gripper made out of coffee beans. Yet, Winfield reminds us that these type of robots are still in development and shouldn't be expected to be running through space any time soon.