"STAR" the "BUCKS"!!!

Starbucks..it is a coffee shop..very very popular in US. Personally I love starbucks coffee.What amazes me, is people coming down there remember and spell out complicated versions of the tasty coffee to be served. Like "Café Estima Blend® Fair Trade Certified".There are many others with "decaffe" and "with/without cream" options and so on.I find it hard to remember all these combinations...but there is no doubt that I love their coffee....especially "CAFE MOCHA"..I love that ..and these days...I have found a shop five minutes from my office; so now I am a regular visitor atleast once, in the morning..after I have checked my first lot of mails and finished my first meet with my client....
Hmmm!!!this short blog is not about their quality and fame but about an incident that quite impressed me. Usually the people attending the customers at the point of sale are cute beautiful girls from college.....:)) but the thought process I saw there, were beyond their beauty.... Let me explain the situation. The entrance to this coffee shop is a glass door where you form a single line queue waiting to be attended to, at one of 3 the cash counters where they electronically complete your transaction and pass on the order to the group ho complete the order. Now morning time is the peak time and the pain area is that the electronic transcation takes a bit of time which inturn delays the order and after they start the order, they take some time to give you your favourite coffee. At times, the order queue gets mixed and you have to wait a long time watching customers after you, being served off, which is a bit irritating as morning time is crunch time; more so for places like Canada where morning starts at 4 am in summer.
One of the store attendants got the pain area and identified the bottle neck- the order intake and the cash counter. She got one of the attendants to stand at the begining of the queue, who took the order even before the customer paid her dues and passd it on to the Serving group. There came the process improvement....the orders were taken before you paid and passed on to Coffee serving group; and by the time you completed the account transaction, your coffee is ready.....maximum a minute wait.....bingo.....process improvement..kudos lady..!!!you are the "star" for the "bucks".