that's what I call table service

A cafe in Christchurch soon promises to become very cool. Is it a new way of serving drip coffee? No. A new single origin blend? No. You guessed, it, it is all about pneumatic tubes. This cafe, C1 Espresso, not only already offers what Andy Warhol once dreamed of - sending customer orders to the kitchen by tube - but is promising much more: delivery of your order, directly to your table, by tube.


For now the cafe owners describe sending miniburgers by tube but one can imagine a whole host of different spherical food items that could be sent to customers' tables by the pneumatic system: pancakes, muffins, clams, poached eggs, bowls of ice-cream ... the list could be endless - and no problems with food getting too cold, or too warm, it is there in seconds! Just hope for a soft landing.

coffee and chocolate

Coffee and chocolate go so well together that I thought this fantastic pneumatic tube system rigged up at The Roasting Plant in New York City would be the perfect image for Easter.

According to a New York Magazine article on the store, the tubes, where "beans dance overheard" are meant to "minimize the time and distance between roasting, grinding, brewing, and drinking". When it comes to coffee, time certainly matters! This is the kind of technology which I can see would also find a perfect place in my old hometown Melbourne, where everything to do wtih coffee is now well and truly science.

Happy Easter!

Pneumatic tubes bring just roasted coffee beans into their respective tubes., originally uploaded by Curious Expeditions. See here for more pictures of The Roasting Plant: http://www.roastingplant.com/tour/

homely tubes

Pneumatic tube systems are used in hospitals, supermarkets, banks and pharmacies. But what about our own homes?

A UK-based project called Foodtubes, which promises to revolutionalise food transportation via pneumatic/vacuum technology, has recently led to all sorts of incredulous outcries and postulations by techie and environmental bloggers embracing and ridiculing the idea. Someone who has commented on the grist blog post about this issue argues that it is a waste to use Foodtube technology at the organisational level, but rather it should be taken into our own homes:

"I don't know about replacing deliveries to stores... trucks are awfully efficient for that! Make them electric, and they'd be hard to beat. On the other hand, pneumatic tubes could provide efficient delivery to individual homes, eliminating the need for people to go to the store. With modern barcode or RFID systems, the packages could be routed to the correct house easily enough. Some things might not do too well - I wouldn't want to cram a 20-pound watermelon into a 6-inch tube - but for most staples it would work quite well"

It isn't the first time that pneumatic tube technology has been considered for home usage. Remember that great Heineken ad from a few months ago? There is also the home elevator, as well as centralised home vacuum cleaning units. My dad remembers one of these units being installed in his parents' new home in the 1980s. It seems that home-based pneumatic tube technology is either something from the past, or the projected Jetsonian future, but is it for us right now?

Image courtesy of fabulousfairy.