New Coke

No, not the disastrous marketing effort of the 80's in which Coke tried to destroy their decades-old brand, but the latest in computer-driven new-fangled gizmos for your neighborhood fast food restaurant.  I present the New Coke Self-Serve Machine, as seen at the Jack-in-the-Box in Mission Viejo:

With more computing power than is used to launch the Space Shuttle, you can now confuse literally dozens of fast food patrons by offering them more than 20 different flavors of Coke products, none of which they can figure out how to dispense. It was rather funny to watch.

First you push in on the dispenser like normal to get ice, then you must make your drink selection from the panel above, and even within that there are sub-menu choices, such as several flavors of Diet Coke, several more of Fanta, even more of Hi-C.  Once you finally get the right choice selected you hit the "Pour" button and the magic happens.

I wondered how they got so many flavors in that one machine and while I was there they ran out of several of them and the manager had to fix it.  I overheard her telling a patron that the new machines were " a pain".  I believe it.

If you can imagine an ink-jet printer with more than 20 color cartridges, you get the idea how this works.  Below the dispenser is a bunch of cartridges for each type of syrup used.  I tried to grab a quick shot with the cartridge bay open:

When a flavor is empty the manager has to go through a bunch of onscreen steps before removing the old cartridge, putting in the new one, and then charging the system like you do with your printer.  Except that unlike your printer, each flavor has to be charged individually.  The process took several minutes and left a number of thirsty patrons standing by.

I also noted another flaw in this marvel of engineering.  The lady ahead of me selected Sprite, but when she hit the "Pour" button, the first blast obviously had some brown Coke syrup in it.  Without dedicated hose lines for each kind of syrup that's going to happen.

I'm sure these will be popping up wherever Coke products are dispensed in self-serve fountains.  If nothing else, it'll be entertaining to watch people try and figure out how to use them.