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By J. Reidy  (whisperbeauty@lycos.com)
April 18, 2001

I've found a new way to gauge a company's success. I stumbled upon it quite by accident, but once I thought about it, it made such glorious common sense that I was surprised I hadn't thought of it before. The signs are often there for all to see, if you only notice them and put the pieces together. So I offer this tool to fellow Fools for your consideration.

It all began when the formerly always-full soda cooler at work started emptying out. Outraged software engineers who had to go a day or two without Jolt or Yoohoo grumbled and wandered back to their desks in disgust. Could caffeine and sugar-deprived programmers still work productively? Didn't management understand how essential it was to provide Coke? To Internet startups, free soda was a part of the culture, and the sense of entitlement to pop ran deep.

Curious about this pattern of weekly deprivation, I asked the soda delivery man what was up, why were we running out so often lately?

His answer was that our company had cut its soda order in half. "So, is your company running on hard times?" he asked. He then proceeded to tell me that cutting back on the soda order was one of the first signs of trouble, and he listed an impressive number of companies that he had known had problems six months before the numbers became obvious to the financial community.

So here is a new tool for predicting the financial troubles brewing in your company: Talk to the soda delivery person!