Glaze Forward

Anyone who has ever had a job has probably encountered a commercial coffee maker. These range from the plain drip machine that has been brought from home to the office to the monster bunn coffee makers that can serve dozens or even hundreds of employees with one brewing. The features available for commercial machines are similar to those of home coffee makers, but there are differences.

The most obvious difference is capacity. A home machine may make one or a few cups at a time, while an office, shop, or factory will need to brew constantly to supply employees with enough coffee. Some machines solve this by having multiple brewers and warming elements on the same machine. This allows for different types of coffee to brew at the same time — most frequently a regular pot and a decaf one at the same time. There may even be an element that provides heated water for tea, cocoa, and soups rather than brewing coffee.

Some commercial coffee makers have accelerated brew times, so that they can brew gallons of coffee at once instead of using the slower percolating rates of home machines. Ease of operation and cleaning are also important for work machines. Controls should be simple to use and instructions for brewing easy to follow.

Workplace coffee makers will need to be much more durable than home machines. They will be used more frequently and for longer periods of time. There should also be extra safety features to protect users from burns and that protect the coffee from burning or scorching.

Everyone is trying to save money these days. Some people are unemployed or working for less than they made a few years ago. Making ends meet has become a question of survival for them. Others are struggling to get ahead on debts acquired during the recent credit boom that has now completely busted. Whatever the reason, few people can afford to pay full retail price on anything.

Coupon-clipping is quickly replacing scrapbooking as a pastime for stay-at-home moms. Being able to combine sale prices, shopper reward programs and coupons can result in savy shoppers buying food and household items for a fraction of their barcode price. Supermarkets are aware of this phenomenon and many are offering double and even triple-coupon days to entice even more shoppers to their sales.

The best defense against retail isn’t knowing about sales and closeouts, it’s learning the best places to shop wholesale. There are warehouse stores that sell their entire inventory at wholesale prices, originally to those who planned to resell them at a markup. However, in these tough times average customers can use websites like DealYard or buy memberships in wholesale shopping clubs to obtain those dream prices that might just help them stay within their budget.

Everyday people don’t think about their online reputation. They share photos and post unflattering status reports and maybe even create personal blogs or websites with content they wouldn’t want their mother or their boss to see. The vastness of the internet makes it seem highly unlikely that anyone will find a single page or status post. The reality is something far different. Companies large and small are hiring online reputation management companies like elixir interactive to help with this all the time. And, more and more, individuals are recognizing that they too have online reputations.

Those who doubt the ability of researchers to dig up dirt online should spend a week or two monitoring their own name. Set up a few Google Alerts and check blog and social media monitoring tools to see how often a name comes up — and in what context. Then do a search for the name in the major search engines and look beyond the top three results. By checking these daily for a week and seeing how quickly results change, it becomes obvious that some of those careless online actions can stick around for months or even years — and that they can be quickly found by potential employers, family members, or even someone they hope to date.

It’s a good idea to have some sort of regular monitoring in place. People hae to start thinking of themselves as brands and do what they can to protect those brands. It’s very easy for a frenemy or jilted lover to smear someone’s internet reputation. Just look at the elixir interactive online reputation management case study to see how even ORM experts can be the subjects of targeted brand attacks. If they are vulnerable, the unsuspecting masses of internet users are at risk as well.