They need to get rid of charging for the internet in their stores. It's extremely lame and very last century kind of idea. If you want me to sit all day and drink extremely profitable coffee, you should for out the $75 a month for internet access. There's hardly anything cheaper a business can do than add wireless internet. Most likely they already have internet, so it's really just a one time cost of a $100 transmitter. But no, they've got all this T-Mobile crap. Nearly every restaurant I go to has free internet. No passwords, no codes. Just internet. Trying to charge me for it just pisses me off.
I was surprised to find that out (not a Starbucks customer). My only thinking is that TMobile pays them to be the "official WiFi provider" at their stores. TMo sells unlimited access to their hotspots for a monthly fee, so they need to have alot of them all over the place in order to entire people to use it. My guess is they share some of that revenue with Starbucks... otherwise they would surely give away like all of their competitors.
Back to the original topic, it's a neat idea, but it needs to be merged with your iTMS account so your name and CC are attached to the "order". It also needs to be an open framework so that all kinds of places could implement it. You set up a WiFi AP and install the software, in which you enter in the items and prices for all the things you want to sell through this gateway.
The application broadcasts a signal that iPod touches/iPhones pick up and automatically add an icon to your Springboard that lets you place the order. Once you submit it, you're charged, and only then does it get sent to the store employees.
So, as an example, McDonald's could put all their combos on it, you pick the one(s) you want, submit/pay, they make your food and when it's ready just call out your name, what you ordered, an order number (that's displayed to you as a confirmation number), whatever.
Any store that has a sales counter could use this. Fast food restaurants, coffee shops, maybe movie theaters/concession stands, I'm sure there's more.