We can now ship hot coffee across the country overnight

Original post:  Aug 18, 2014

Many of my projects sit at the intersection of the supply chain and information technology. To many people, there does not seem to be an obvious link between the two. It may or may not surprise you to learn that the shipping companies FedEx and UPS use some of the most sophisticated software packages in the US. They have the ability to track millions of packages with incredible accuracy to ensure that it arrives at your doorstep--in many cases, overnight. They have even invested huge sums of money to calculate delivery routes which eliminate inefficient left hand turns!

This article discusses a public relations stunt by Thermos. To drum up some publicity for their newest product, they came up with the idea of shipping hot coffee to various journalists across the country. In this particular case, Thermos shipped 40 oz. of hot coffee from Minneapolis to Washington, DC overnight. When the coffee arrived, it was still quite hot!

Here is the package:

Here is the temperature a few minutes after opening the thermos bottle:

That might even be hotter than what we get out of the Keurig in Mansfield!

I think the end of the article sums up the real magic in this stunt:

But there’s something that enables all of this, from my supping of the coffee to your reading this now: the global supply chain. The ability to fling ingredients and products from coast-to-coast and continent-to-continent makes not only Thermos’s contest but Spyhouse’s very business possible. It’s the supply chain that moves coffee beans from El Salvador to Minneapolis, where they can be roasted and sipped in days. It’s the supply chain—in the form of FedEx, which, remember, has the world’s fourth largest collection of aircraft—that performs the final stunt of getting coffee around the lower 48 in half a day.

Behind every ingredients list stand the movers and shippers of our world: each, like FedEx, possessing a private army of execution. I accepted Thermos’s coffee contest because it seemed a spectacle of logistics. But every single day of our lives is already that.

Here's the link to the full article:  I Drank a Cup of Hot Coffee That Was Overnighted Across the Country - CityLab