
The Turkish Coffee Syndrome - jcater
http://www.deadprogrammer.com/turkish-coffee-syndrome
======
nine_k
TL;DR: a Turkish fast food point stopped serving [Turkish] coffee, because
coffee drinkers tend to linger, buying only one cup.

Business reasons can outweigh technical considerations. Some things are not
done not because it's hard to do, but because it does not make business sense.
(Thank you, capt'n!)

~~~
mistercow
I'm not sure the dismissal as obvious is warranted. Yes, it's obvious once you
break it down into those terms, but you're waving away the part that's not so
obvious: that offering a product that's easy to make and patrons want can be
economically disadvantageous enough for a business to decide not to offer it.
You've filed that under "business reasons", but the specific business reason
is the whole point.

Still, it seems to me like this shows a severe lack of creativity on the part
of the business. A smarter way to do it would be to offer the Turkish coffee
alone at an outrageous price that would deter people from ordering it and
sitting around. Then you offer a deal where it's reasonably priced if ordered
with a meal. That way 90% of the customers you want are happy, and the
customers that take up tables for hours go elsewhere.

~~~
tedunangst
See also: "Please take my money. Why won't you let me give you money for this
thing I want you to sell me?"

In this instance, I'm not sure raising the price even solves the problem.
You'll just get old men ordering meals and pushing the food around their plate
for hours.

~~~
princeb
> I'm not sure raising the price even solves the problem.

Priced correctly, it should. if coffee buyers sit around long enough to deny a
second ground of customers a table to sit at, the appropriate price for a
coffee could be something like, the original price of the coffee + the average
amount earned from a single group of customers. for example if the coffee
original costs $5, and the typical table holds 2 persons earning you about $7
each, then the appropriate price for a coffee (unbundled) is maybe $19.

if someone decides that $20 coffee is worth it, then it makes no difference to
you that you sold him the coffee and let him sit around for an hour without
another table of customers coming in. if not, he will not be there, and you
could now host another table of paying customers.

~~~
mistercow
Well tedunangst's point, which is worth considering, is that the customers who
hang around will bypass the whole raised price scheme by ordering an actual
meal and getting the discounted price.

But that's still avoidable by having the discount structured so that you just
can't get a Turkish coffee without paying some minimum amount, determined by
trial and error to make it nonviable for retirees to purchase and then sit
around all day.

With that scheme, however, it becomes more complicated to work out what price
makes it worth it for them to actually just sit around, because you also have
to factor in the cost of the food they're wasting.

------
purplelobster
When I was showing my wife around Stockholm, it started pouring down, and we
quickly went into a small coffee shop on a touristy street. I tried to buy a
coffee ($5 mind you) and they wouldn't let me. Not without buying something
else as well. Now I can understand that it makes economical sense for them,
since they had few seats and it was a busy location, but that experience was
just hugely off-putting to me. I will never go back there.

I call it... the Stockholm Syndrome.

~~~
trcollinson
I see what you did there ;)

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keiferski
I've recently started making Turkish coffee every morning at home (thanks
Turkish GF for introducing it to me!). I like it. It's stronger than regular
coffee and you drink it like espresso. The big difference is that you don't
strain it through a filter; the grounds end up at the bottom of the cup.

The preparation is much more time-consuming than traditional coffee, which I
think is the other half of the phenomenon mentioned. You can really only make
4-5 demitasse cups at a time, and it takes 10-15 minutes of actively watching
and stirring the cup. Compare this to brew coffee or espresso drinks which
take 30 seconds to 2 minutes, tops. So, it's not surprising that Turkish
restaurants, whilst adapting to a fast-paced Western capitalist model, lose
motivation for going through the whole process.

~~~
Swizec
_Why_ does it take 10-15 minutes to make Turkish coffee? It takes about 2
minutes to make the kind of turkish coffee we drink here in Slovenia ...

Unless you're roasting your own beans, but that's supposed to take hours, not
15 minutes.

~~~
keiferski
The water should be on low-medium heat, which by necessity takes a little
while to get to a boil. High heat will get it done in 2 minutes, but the
grounds won't mix as well and it sometimes will be burnt-tasting.

For reference, here is how I was taught to make it:

1\. Put water in cezve equal to number of cups you'd like

2\. Put cezve on stove at low-medium heat

3\. Add in one teaspoon of coffee per cup

4\. Add in sugar (if desired)

5\. Keep on low heat until foam and small bubbles appear.

6\. Pour a little bit of coffee into each cup, then return to heat. Repeat
2-3x until cups are full.

7\. Let each cup sit for a minute to let the grounds settle.

8\. Enjoy!

~~~
Swizec
Ah, that's probably why we usually add the coffee when water is done boiling.
Then bring it to a boil one more time. Or up to four times, depending on
taste.

 _shrug_ Still won't take 10 minutes even if you're boiling slowly at low
heat. Unless you're making a super large pot, but making more than two turkish
coffees at once is far out. 2 is the number you shall make.

Your description sounds a little different than how we make it. Guess the
recipe changed in the ~1000km journey up to us.

~~~
jacalata
_making more than two turkish coffees at once is far out. 2 is the number you
shall make._

The conversation started about restaurants - it doesn't seem outlandish to
expect restaurants to deal with more than two people at once.

~~~
Swizec
You're supposed to use separate cezvas. If you're doing it absolutely properly
then its' one cezva per patron. That's how my grandmother used to do it when
she owned a restaurant. Still has a dozen of those tiny things laying around.

------
busterarm
I like this fix. People don't realize that loitering in restaurants
(particularly by teenagers and retirees) is a huge problem and reduces
business. Restaurants frequently lobby together to get loitering laws passed
to deal with it.

I used to live in a neighborhood with an abundance of retirement homes and a
dearth of restaurants. The two that were open and had decent hours were
_always_ filled with old people sitting for hours talking and reading the
paper. Often they were borderline-homeless/smelly and they would get into
fights. It was incredibly frustrating to want to get food and not have a place
to sit. Because this restaurant was part of a chain and had policies to
follow, there wasn't really anything they could do to alleviate the situation.

My only option to eat was basically to take the subway out of the neighborhood
or walk significantly out of my way.

I don't think any business should be forced to serve customers that are a
drain on their revenue. Other options like selectively serving coffee could
trigger a costly discrimination suit.

tl;dr: old, table-bogarting assholes are ruining delicious Turkish coffee for
everyone and there isn't really anything that can be done about it.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I'd really like to live in a world where serving your local community, as
these restaurants clearly were, is more important than maximizing profits to
the detriment of your community.

Oh well.

~~~
MBlume
...what.

There were two restaurants in the community. If it had been possible to make a
profit, more restaurants could have been run and they would have served the
community too. The _primary complaint_ in the comment was not, y'know, some
balance sheet isn't high enough, but that this person had no where to eat out
because it was impossible to run a restaurant without losing money.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It just strikes me as odd, sometimes, that teenagers and retirees looking for
a place to spend their time among friends in reasonable comfort, despite their
limited income, are treated as parasites on the community; inherently less
deserving to be allowed out in public than someone who has money to prove
their humanity.

And then we wonder why there's juvenile delinquency.

Never mind, I'm just being unreasonably idealistic again.

------
mattmaroon
If I were them I'd just raise the prices. Or pull it off the menu until the
old folks migrated then put it back. Or just serve it to people who are eating
and ask for it specifically. There are at least 10 solutions that don't leave
money on the table.

~~~
sopooneo
I agree with every point you make. But I bet reality has counters for them
all. In line with the author, I've found that inexplicable behavior _may_
result from stupidity or ignorance, but much more often there is something you
don't know.

~~~
mattmaroon
You might be right. I'm not 100% sure what the solution is. But I am sure it's
not telling someone "no I won't sell you the high markup item you want".

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tlb
A/B testing would have gotten the same result, if they'd optimized
revenue/table across menu variations. In fact, A/B testing on websites does
frequently enhance dark patterns.

------
ballard
To be extra literal:

Café 220

    
    
       220 Univ Ave, Palo Alto
    

Has Turkish coffee and you won't be rushed out the door.

Also usually comps tea if you order something for dine-in.

Veggie mousaka and falafel wraps FTW.

(Gotta plug my friends, after all.)

------
gkya
Usually, after a cup of Turkish coffee, follows a session of "coffee fortune-
telling"[0]. The residuum of coffee in the cup is reviewed to make estimations
on the future. Living in Istanbul, Turkey, I've seen and heard of a lot of
places that make a business out of coffee fortune-telling. Maybe this would
help shopkeepers abroad gain some income from Turkish coffee and not stop
serving it.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasseography)
\-- Also referred to as "coffee reading".

edit: added wikipedia page.

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guard-of-terra
Where I live this problem is solved by raising prices, so you can't find
coffee for less than 5$ in busy places.

But if for some reason business is averse to raising prices, weird schemes
materialize.

~~~
maxk42
Where I live there are groups of old men who come to the coffee shops in the
evenings and buy one cup of coffee, then sit around bullshitting and playing
cards for hours. If this business is facing a similar problem, then raising
the price of a cup of coffee to $5 simply won't cut it.

Then again -- I know a lot of businesses despise these customers, but these
are the guys who will be there night after night, rain or shine. Your typical
customer comes by how often? Once every month or two? It's worthwhile to put
up with them if they're not causing you to lose other business.

~~~
dmckeon
Opportunity - segment the market: keep restaurant as is, organize a self-
supporting social club for the coffee drinkers & card players nearby,
upstairs, or next door, serve coffee, take-out pastries, etc. to club-goers.
Details, regulations, ymmv.

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tareqak
I maybe naive, but I see an opportunity for a Turkish coffee stand.

~~~
mirkules
Nobody stands while drinking Turkish coffee. :) But seriously, it's a social
drink, which is why it will (or should) never be served in a paper cup. But
being originally from a Balkan state myself, I may have a bias against "to go"
coffee.

~~~
bitops
I feel like a real Turkish coffee establishment where you could hang out,
chat, and play backgammon could be one of those "slow" things that people like
(slow as in slow food). Especially if it was a "no laptops allowed" type of
establishment. Just to connect and have real conversations and socialization.

This is me at my most idealistic. :)

~~~
205guy
No one is arguing that this isn't a good thing. The whole point of the article
is that sometimes you cannot have good things. Such an establishment cannot
survive (cover costs and liveable wages) in a place with high rent.

------
litmus
Frankly these types of places have all of my understanding but none of my
respect. Outside of Turkey the coffee would probably be part of the core
allure of a Turkish restaurant. The irony being that coffee and tea are often
complimentary after meals at many restaurants in Turkey. Its sort of a
betrayal when the social aspect is supposed to be part of the package given
that people in Turkey spend long hours at the dinner table, talking. Is there
a legal issue that prevents them from only serving coffee with a meal? And
then the thought that old folks spend part of their day walking around trying
to figure out where they can sit down and talk is all kind of depressing. This
seems like a poor fix, but hey, talk is cheap.

------
Emass12
Problem could be easily solved by simply requiring a meal order for coffee,
although perhaps they were afraid they'd anger the other patrons. Still,
margins on coffee can be quite high.

~~~
markhelo
Or just offering coffee before or at the end of each meal. Factor the price in
your menu for large entrees. People like free stuff.

------
Poiesis
Charge rent. Serve free coffee.

~~~
eru
Like a co-working space?

------
johnrob
Corollary: Beware of unintended business ramifications when doing a code
rewrite (i.e. putting coffee back on the menu might cause revenue per table to
drop).

------
yetanotherphd
They should just rent out table space per minute independently of the cost of
meal itself.

~~~
lsc
sort of the 'internet cafe' model with refreshments. If you wanted to go for
the 'uber' crowd, you could adjust your prices based on demand.

I don't know about the adjusting price on demand (there is a lot of advantage
to fixed and predictable prices) but I do think it is a model that could
possibly work.

Without demand pricing, you would also need some hook to 'bootstrap' I mean,
you aren't going to pay money to go hang out in an empty building - maybe good
free coffee? that would be a cheap hook that would work, at least for me.

This would also likely work in a place where there aren't good regular coffee
houses. I imagine a 'pay by the hour' place would have a hard time existing
next to, say, red rock in mountain view.

The other problem I see is actually collecting the money; if you charge people
per-drink, they pay you when they get another drink. If you charge per hour,
you've gotta have someone monitoring, or hand out hardware that tracks the
customer.

I do like the model, though. You can emphasize the social, you know, like a
nightclub, only with the more intellectual connotations of the cafe.

~~~
yetanotherphd
my comment wasn't 100% serious, more poking fun at my disciplines tendency to
advocate "markets for everything". However maybe it won't be too long before
all kinds of social venues don't charge by the hour.

It seems like even the low tech solution of time limits is not viable for
these places, so they resort to the simpler solution of taking coffee off the
menu.

------
MrKurtHaeusler
I thought restaurants make more money from drinks (and deserts) than actual
meals.

~~~
chillax
Probably, but if someone sits at a table for hours and only buys one cup over
all those hours other sales will most likely be lost if the place is full of
those 1-cupers.

------
farseer
They could have raised the price of coffee instead of eliminating it.

~~~
ape4
I was about to post the same. Maybe $25.

------
obilgic
one simply does not drink turkish coffee at fast food place.

------
bsullivan01
Turks do love their coffee, it's their second religion :-)

You can buy the wares
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coffee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coffee)
in ethnic stores, Turkish, Middle Eastern or even Eastern European stores
(many were occupied by the Turks for quite a few centuries.) As for coffee,
just ask a good online store to grind it at #0 for Turkish style. Grinders at
supermarket do not work as well. The coffee loses its freshness a bit so the
first few days but it's still very good.

Most Turkish coffee drinkers are either from Turkey, Middle east or Eastern
/Southern Europe, or people that _generally speaking_ do take their time so I
understand why restaurants are pissed at them.

------
michaelochurch
This isn't a great analogy, because the absence of Turkish coffee isn't a case
of malice. They have to degrade service (i.e. take the coffee off the menu) in
that way in order to survive. It's not malicious for a business to do things
that are slightly shitty but necessary in order to stay alive.

On the other hand, there are a lot of cases where bad code and processes are a
result of, if rarely malice, intentional and socially negative behaviors (that
aren't justified by a need for survival). "Launch and flee" is often
intentional.

~~~
breadbox
I think you're taking an overly-narrow definition of "malice". At least in the
context of Hanlon's Razor, "malice" typically includes stances that might be
more specifically described as "short-term thinking" and/or "apathy". The
point is really just to contrast it with "stupidity".

------
lmm
But that's not the reason. The most frustrating part of bad code isn't that
it's bad, it's that writing better code pays off even in the short term. Tests
often earn their keep before you've even finished the feature they're testing,
as do more basic things like sensible variable names. We're not talking about
pragmatic sacrifices for business reasons; that can lead to well-written code
that doesn't scale or makes dubious assumptions about its data. But plain
unreadable code is never the result of anything except ignorance.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
I think you commented on the wrong article.

~~~
yetanotherphd
no, the analogy just went way over your head

EDIT: On re-reading I have no idea if that post was actually directed at this
article or not. I was just making the joke because it looks like any post
about code might be a metaphor for any article if you think hard enough.

