A: Swipe-in Counter
A1. The clerks are unproductive. They are forced to stand in front of the small counter, doing nothing but greeting customers who are kind enough to greet them first. Aside from that, their only recreational activity involves chatting with other fellow employees, often in Spanish. They never verify if the person entering the cafeteria has swiped their cards; they only deal with the extremely rare cases when a person voluntarily swipes but the machine does not respond.
- Motivate the clerks. Give them a seat so they can work more comfortably. Raise their wages so they are more active.
- Introduce a tagging system so the clerks know who has swiped in and who has not. A paper sticker tag is clearly unsustainable – perhaps a reusable badge?
- Remove the clerks and introduce an unmanned swiping system based entirely on the consumers’ responsibility and awareness, since that’s already what’s happening. The swiping system will occupy less space and perhaps integrate better with the surroundings.
B: Drink Dispensers
B1. Some drinks are more popular than others. For example, much more people select lemon tea than fruit punch. During peak time there might be short queues before popular drinks. The ingredients and processing methods of certain drinks are also naturally more sustainable or healthy than others. However, all the drinks are placed side by side without distinction.
- Flexible vertical designs can be integrated to dynamically place the drink dispensers. In default, more sustainable and healthy choices are placed closer to the height of hands and eyes, while the others are placed above the comfortable level. This can encourage the consumption of friendlier drinks, and the alternation also solves congestion when people grab drinks next to each other.
B2. I see drinks flowing down along the container’s inner walls every moment. Some research reveals that this is a method of stirring the drinks by spraying them to the top of the containers so that the syrup and water don’t separate. Stirring continuously consumes a lot of power; allowing drinks to flow along the walls also maximize the heat exchange between the iced drinks and the warm air, creating additional burden on refrigeration.
- Change a stirring method (stir without spraying) or a container type (double insulation) to preserve heat.
- Restrict stirring to longer intervals, e.g. 10 minutes per stir.
- Stop stirring; allow syrup and water to naturally separate. It’s not a big deal.
- Don’t mix in the first place; separate syrup and water so that customers can select their own favorite syrup-water proportions.
B3. It is quite common for drinks to spill when poured from the outlet into the cups, especially into empty cups. Spills waste of the drinks and the resources used to produce the drinks. Spills also leave resistant stains of food coloring on the table, and the strong cleaners used to remove the stains might harm the environment.
- Decrease the pressure at drink outlets, or change the direction to something gentler.
- Decrease the distance from the outlets to the bottoms of the cups.
B4. Refilling the drink dispensers still relies on manual force, and I am lucky to encounter such an incidence during my observation.
- Use tubes
C / D: Allergen-Free Processing / Storage Areas
CD1. The areas are visited infrequently, if at all.
- Make people aware of the presence of these areas.
- Decrease the range of food and equipment available in these areas – if they’re unused, they are wasting energy.
E: Potential Possibilities
E1. It is obvious that the cafeteria adopts a different theme every day judging from its menu (e.g. Japanese, Jamaican, Malaysian), but it is not directly stated anywhere.
E2. The cafeteria has a uniform lighting and random loud music.
E3. The cafeteria uses bulletin boards and whiteboards to display suggestions (e.g. eat less red meat less often) and encourage interactions (e.g. question of the day), but no one bothers.