On March 19, 2008, Starbucks announced it will be acquiring Coffee Equipment Company, the small company that produces and awesome single-cup, commercial, French-press style coffee machine that produces a cup in just minutes. I was so excited about this announcement that I wanted to make a lens about it. Well, actually, I joined Squidoo in May 2008 so I didn’t make the lens until then. On my Starbucks and Clover lens, I added links to the most recent news articles about the event and tried to start a debate about whether the buy-out was a good thing. Oh, and for those of you who have no idea what the Clover is, or how immensely fantastic it is, I also talk about the machine itself. (It can control cup size, temperature, brew time, pressure, and hook up to the internet!?!) The coffee tastes so fresh and great.
This is one of my earlier lenses and I’m thinking about reworking it at some point. I haven’t added very much of a personal viewpoint because at the time, I wasn’t sure how to incorporate it. I also worried that it would dilute the authority of the lens. I added the Duel module because I wanted to start a discussion about whether making the Clover completely proprietary would hurt independent coffee shops. I felt that there are a lot of people out there who are very protective over the individual coffee shop and very anti-Starbucks. On the other hand, lots of people just don’t care and quite enjoy all the multitudes of whizzy flavors Starbucks offers. Unfortunately, as you can see on the module today, not much of a debate is going on. I tried to start it but only got one reply from my i-banking friend whom I told to visit the page.
I’m not about to give up yet, though. It’s said that some tens of Clovers will be deployed in San Francisco Starbucks by the end of the year. Perhaps by then, Google searches will go up and traffic will start coming in. I wish this page luck!