Starbucks Files Patent For Barista Helper That Can Concoct Complex Beverages

If you’ve been to Starbucks, there’s no doubt you’ve waited in line for your order while the overwhelmed barista hurries through a complex set of steps to create the perfect, candy-colored drink for the customer ahead of you.

Not to mention, with the company allowing customers to customize their orders in recent years—from deciding the amount of sugar, syrup, or shots of coffee added—wait times have gotten longer as the staff struggle to follow a complicated set of recipes with numerous components.

To relieve such pressure on its employees, the coffee retailer recently filed a patent for a machine that could eventually help baristas make these customized drinks, allowing customers to receive their orders more quickly.

According to Insider, during a business call last year, President of Starbucks North America Sara Trilling revealed that 60% of the drinks sold in Q4 were customized, with the firm making over US$1 billion in sales just from the extra selections.

To keep this up, it’s no surprise Starbucks is looking to automate the customization of drinks, so baristas won’t be required to memorize hundreds of different recipes while coming up with personalized concoctions.

The patented machine would guide workers through each step while dispensing a customer’s particular selections, such as specific syrups and flavors that have been requested. This could hopefully decrease the wait time for drinks while reducing the number of errors made.

While it still remains unknown when Starbucks will formally introduce the machines to its stores, the company has certainly been working on the gadget for quite a while, first filing a provisional application for the patent back in July 2021.

If customizing the ingredients in your drink wasn’t enough, the publication revealed Starbucks could be considering allowing customers to personalize beverages further by dictating the color they want the order to be.

These requests could be mapped out by the machine and would allow customers to match their frappes to their outfits, or special colors based on holiday seasons. How about drinks that are localized to match the colors of sports teams at stadiums or fields?

Other possible features that could be added include microphones for voice recognition technology and Wi-Fi integration. Will this device eventually become a staple in Starbucks outlets worldwide? Let’s wait and see.

[via Insider and Tasting Table, cover image via Phongsaya Limpakhom | Dreamstime.com]