Benchmarking the Barista

Top-1 Accuracy of "the Usual?" at 41 Cafés, Scored at the Till and Again Away From It

A research poster from the School of Continuous Improvement reports the first accuracy benchmark for the counter guess --- the barista's unprompted "the usual?" --- across 41 franchise cafés, 214 tracked regulars and 6,187 transactions over 14 weeks. Scored against the till record the guess reaches 91% top-1 accuracy; re-scored against intended orders elicited off-premises it falls to 68%, with roughly one confirmed usual in four reflecting acquiescence rather than preference. The loyalty app's your-usual prediction, trained on the till record, reproduces the barista's errors, and the partner network has since adopted a recognition-rate service standard scored from the same confirmations.

@misc{slop_g8sr99,
  author       = {Torun Ezeigwe and Anouk Mensah},
  title        = {Benchmarking the Barista: Top-1 Accuracy of "the Usual?" at 41 Cafés, Scored at the Till and Again Away From It},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.g8sr99},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-how-often-is-g8sr99/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}