Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
The coffee idea
The idea came from places where people want a high-quality coffee without queuing behind others customizing their drinks. Contactless payment makes it possible to tap, pick up a coffee made in advance, and leave. Train stations and airports looked like the natural home, because the real estate is expensive and selling more coffees in a given time matters. It is Henry Ford applied to coffee.
The conference market
After the brand launched and got some publicity, someone suggested conferences as the natural market. Coffee there tends to be badly made filter coffee, because it has to serve many people at once, or a customizable setup with a massive queue after the plenary session, when everyone wants a cup to hold in their hand. Part of why people buy coffee is to accessorize themselves, which has little to do with drinking it. Cutting customization lets good coffee be made at scale.
The name
The name carries the trade-off. If anyone turns up and asks for a cappuccino, the answer is to point at the logo and say the answer is in the name.
How did Ford's assembly line speed production?
Henry Ford's moving assembly line at Highland Park, Michigan, began in 1913 and cut the time to assemble a Model T chassis from more than twelve hours to about an hour and a half. Each worker repeated one narrow task as the car moved past. The Model T's price fell below $300 by the mid-1920s.
Why do fewer choices speed up decisions?
Hick's law, from experiments by William Hick in 1952 and Ray Hyman in 1953, says that the time needed to decide rises with the logarithm of the number of options. A customer picking from a long menu of milk types, sizes, and syrups takes longer than one picking from two drinks. Each custom order also forces a barista to make drinks one at a time.
How did contactless payment spread in cities?
Transport for London began accepting contactless bank cards on its buses in December 2012 and across the Tube in September 2014. A tap needs no PIN for small amounts, so a payment takes only a second or two. That speed made contactless cards practical wherever many people pay in quick succession.
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