Coffee Club has bought a “bean to cup” coffee machine which is in the Open Lab kitchen. Anyone can join the club which is a self-balancing fair system: you buy the beans in proportion to your use.
To join the club:
If your profile is not available, choose a temporary profile to begin with. You can add other cards (or RFID tags with a stable value – do not use your phone!) by scanning and choosing your profile again.
Record each coffee shot by tapping your access card on the reader on top of the machine (the display will confirm the recording). The scheme works out who should next buy a bag of coffee by calculating the ratio of your coffee shots to how much coffee you’ve purchased. This system remains fair in the long run assuming that the number of shots of coffee per bean weight (from the dose) remains the same, and that the price of coffee remains roughly the same.
Note that the “double shot” button adds approximately 25% more coffee to your shot – this is ignored by the scheme and assumed to generally balance out. Therefore: tap once if you have a single or “double” shot, and tap twice if you have two full single shots.
You can keep track of your usage (and see when you are due to buy a bag of coffee) on the interface. It is each member’s responsibility to ensure that the machine is clean, tidy and ready for the next user.
It is each members’ responsibility to buy coffee when you are told to do so. When there is low stock, the member’s with the highest consumption-to-purchase ratio will be prompted to buy coffee.
We recommend buying coffee beans in 1 kg bags, for example:
You must register your purchase!
We have a mailing list ol-coffeeclub@ncl.ac.uk.
To join this mailing list, so that you can be notified about the coffee machine and the club:
SUBSCRIBE ol-coffeeclub
followed by a space, your first name, a space, then your surname; making sure your email body is entirely blank – delete any email signatures. (Alternatively you can log in to the Newcastle University Mailing List Service and manually subscribe yourself to the ol-coffeeclub
list).The original purchase was for the De’Longhi Esam4000.b Magnifica Bean to Cup Coffee Machine, 15 Bar - Black on 24-Nov-2016 for £251.19, plus 3x bags coffee – between 7 founding members at £36 each (two additional members joined at the original rate). Manufacturer’s page: De’Longhi ESAM 4000.B Magnifica Bean to Cup Coffee Machine (Black).
The original machine developed a fault where it always dispensed too little coffee, similar to another reported case, and appears to be a faulty front control board “DEL5232110000”. Amazon sent a replacement unit (22-June-2017).
When the machine finally needs replacing, the cost will likely have to be shared between members – potentially crediting the contributed value to each member (e.g. convert coffee Kg to £ credits).