When I was in the Gandhinagar office of TCS, a juice seller (20 something) at the cafeteria used this amazing hack for increasing his sales.

So, during the peak hours, he found it difficult to manage since he didn’t have any help on his counter. The employees would rush to him with their coupons for bournvita, cold coffee, mixed juice, shakes and everything else, all at once. With only two mixers and two human hands, he had his limitations and often the customer would have to wait for half an hour or more. He didn’t even have a refrigerator.

I would look at him for days and would feel pity at him. Then, a month later, I noticed a change at his counter. The customers were still aplenty but instead of half an hour, they were getting their orders in 10 minutes.

So what he did was, he had made an estimate of what kind of drinks most people have at his counter. He had decorated an entire row of plastic glasses with bournvita in it, waiting for the hot milk to be poured. Something similar was done for oreo shake and cold coffee too. So, he was saving time on tearing packets and peeling off fruits and spooning out bournvita and sugar into the glasses. By the time he juiced fruits for one order, he had already supplied 5 glasses of bournvita and so on. I also noticed that he had worked on his hand eye coordination and speed. He was mixing things fast and had replaced glasses with plastic glasses and cups. Instead of keeping it in the corner, he kept the trash bucket, near his feet. He stood at one place and did 5 different things.

He told me he never went to school after class 4th because he hated mathematics, but he so efficiently understood and applied the demand supply curve for his profit.