Will a new “lean-thinking” policy be just the money-saving move Starbucks needs right now? Plus, Slate tells you what you already knew about fast food coffee

Talk about micromanagement. Starbucks’ newest request to their baristas? No more bending!

The company is preparing to roll out a new “lean thinking” time management policy that would curb the idle seconds baristas spend bending over to scoop coffee, waiting for a pot to drain, or just standing near the pastry case.

“Motion and work are two different things. Thirty percent of the partners’ time is motion; the walking, reaching, bending,” said Scott Heydon, vice president of lean thinking at Starbucks.

Taking their ideas from the Japanese concept of lean manufacturing, the company believes less downtime for baristas means cranking out drinks faster and more efficiently. That means they have to hire or maintain fewer baristas to perform the same tasks.

Heydon and his lean team have been traveling to Starbucks locations throughout the country using a stopwatch and a Mr. Potato Head toy to teach baristas how to perform a task more quickly. (No, I’m not making this up) They challenge the baristas to assemble the toy — lips, nose, eyes, and all — and then imagine how they could streamline the process to put the toy together faster.

In practical application, that means moving the most commonly ordered syrup flavors closer to where the drinks are made and moving final touches like whipped cream and chocolate syrup closer to where the drinks are finally served.

All this streamlining makes some feel Starbucks is taking automation a little too far.

“They’re trying to turn workers into robots,” Erik Forman, a barista in Minneapolis, told MSN. “It’s going to essentially turn the cafe into a factory. They want to control our every move in order to pinch every possible penny.”

Slate picks the best of quick serve coffees

The online newsmagazine Slate recently conducted a blind coffee taste test between Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and McDonald’s McCafe. Author Nathan Heller’s argument is that we can’t all stop at our favorite little roaster/cafe every morning and if you have to grab it to go, you might as well get the best you can. No argument there.

Testers looked at both coffee and cappuccino from all three chains and evaluated each for taste, consistency, presentation, and process, with points for each category adding up to a top score of 60.

Surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly depending on where your allegiance lies) McDonald’s McCafe took home high scores for their cappuccino. The testers said it had the “most coffee taste” and appreciated its milk-to-coffee ratio. One caveat though, “the McCafe swirl was unsettling consistent across our samples”. Guess all those accent marks can’t separate you that much from still being at the world’s largest chain restaurant.

For drip coffee, the testers chose Dunkin’ Donuts as the winner, but it seems to be by default.

“Although we found the coffee more watery than we would have liked, it was the least oily of the three samples and—more to the point—the least unsettling to behold,” Heller writes.

Kind of sad when the crown goes to the “least unsettling” cup. I guess that’s still better than the initial reactions the testers gave when trying the Starbucks drip coffee, which ranged from “oof” to “yeesh!”

Heller also docked Dunkin’s points when the cashier mumbled unintelligibly in response to his question about how often the coffee was brewed. He gave those points back to Starbucks for their clockwork-like effort (see above) of brewing fresh beans every 20 minutes. Check out the rest of this entertaining article here.

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