There’s a company in Seattle that actually works out of a coffee shop. It’s called Delicious Monster and they make one of the most innovative products available for the Macintosh platform. Called Delicious Library, the program uses Apple’s inbuilt and add-on webcameras to scan in the books, CDs and DVDs of an individual and adds them to a virtual library. By linking barcodes and UPC numbers to the Amazon database, the library identifies the products in ones library and lists them in graphical format. It’s so innovative and districtive that Apple hired away two of the most crucial employees of the company. With no full-time staff and only one partner remaining at the company (the other was one of those new Apple employees), two losses is significant.
Delicious Monster directs users to ‘Browse your digital shelves just like real shelves’, and with their product it’s actually possible.
When the company comes to work, they do so at a coffee house called Zuka in the University District of Seattle, a hippy, counterculture area. By not maintaining any permanent office space the owners of Delicious Monster manage to keep costs low, despite their set level of donations to the coffee shop and there are other benefits. It keeps the staff happy, and keeps the boss on grounded in reality because you can’t blow up at staff in the middle of a crowded coffee shop.
The unusual location has attracted attention on online sites and landed the company on the TV news. But there’s more to Delicious Monster than its proximity to fancy espresso drinks. Its software, Delicious Library, has generated a loyal following among Mac users, won a string of awards and made the small, low-overhead company “massively profitable,” as Shipley puts it.
“At Zoka, you’re in a bad mood, and everybody’s like, ‘Hey, jerk, stop acting like a jerk,’ ” Shipley said. “You can’t be a tyrant when you’re just another guy in a coffee shop.”
“I never thought we were going to be this successful with this product,” said Shipley, 36, the company’s “chief monster” and co-founder. “I was really proud of it … but I can’t believe the success that’s come out of it.”
Seattle PI: Delicious Monster turning heads with its media cataloging tools
Delicious-Monster.com
Now if there were only some way to make sure the management and staff of coffee shops themselves couldn’t be massive jerks sometimes…
;p