In the face of economic pressures and customer complaints about coffee quality, Starbucks has revised its drink-making guidelines for baristas: “Starbucks baristas are being told to stop making multiple drinks at the same time and focus instead on no more than two drinks at a time-starting a second one while finishing the first,” reports The Wall Street Journal. Other changes: baristas are to steam milk for each drink (rather than for several drinks at a time), rinse pitchers after each use, stay at the espresso bar and use only one espresso machine at a time. Starbucks says the changes will improve quality and efficiency, but baristas are skeptical. “While I’m blending a frappuccino, it doesn’t make sense to stand there and wait for the blender to finish running, because I could be making an iced tea at the same time,” says Tyler Swain, a barista in Omaha. Readers, do you think the changes will be good for business? [%comments]
Slowing Down to Increase Profits?
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I think that this has both positive and negative sides for Starbucks business. Let start with the good side. Focusing so much on one order, than on 10 at the time will make the drinks have a higher quality. It will taste better and it will satisfy consumers more since a lot of time was put into it, and it was made a lot more carefully. Doing this satisfies consumers, probably making them want to come back again. = good business.
However, it does have negative side. Putting in SO much time into one single drink is going to cost them a lot of money. Starbucks is known for its super long lines, and that is when the baristas are focusing on 5 drinks at a time. Imagine what will happen to the lines when they go one by one in preparing the drinks.
Personally, I think that Starbucks have been loosing costumers since reccently their beverages have gone down in quality. Doing this WILL help satisfy consumers. However, they have to look for a solution for the time problem. Long lines can make people go somewhere because it makes it look ‘good’. however, long lines can also push many of them away. How about getting more baristas or more machines?…
The reason I choose Starbucks is because of its efficiency. I thought the drive-thru stores were bad for business because you can’t get a drink as fast inside. This new move will no doubt slow them down even more, and customers like me will go elsewhere. Of course, I never order anything but regular coffee, so maybe the company is trying to weed out the low-dollar customers and target the big spenders.
Is Starbucks a volume-driven business?
Won’t this hurt their ability to increase volumetric sales?
Oh and btw Starbucks is one of the only places that sells shade grown (their Mexican brand) but they’re greenwashing by changing their name to sound like a local coffeehouse. They can improve their image by deciding if they’re an evil empire or if they’re a responsible company. You can’t be both, Starbucks.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/localwashing-new-greenwashing.php
This is probably a step in the right direction. As a former starbucks barista myself, I can tell you some horror stories about working the bar with a manager cracking the whip behind me. The expectation was that a single barista should be able to manage two drinks on every machine (4 in total at my store) at our peak hours, when the line was out the door. The emphasis was definitely more on sped than quality, and quality was measured very rarely; for example, my boss could surely tell I was taking too long to make a drink, but he rarely noticed if I was using the right type of milk or checking the temperature (if it goes from hot to lukewarm, you’re supposed to toss the milk and start over). There was also no incentive to make especially good drinks; the customers can’t tip you.
Taking the pressure off baristas to perform at superman speed will definitely benefit product quality. Better still, however, Starbucks should change their approach to customer complaints if they want to improve their efficiency. Starbucks’ official policy for consumers is that if they do not find their drink satisfactory, Starbucks will make it for them again, free of charge. In practice, this usually means that one out of every ten or twelve people will use this as a license to reject their drink for reasons that would never fly at another coffee chain (for example, ‘the bubbles in my latte are too big’) or, even worse, change their order after the fact. This not only wastes the time and materials involved in making a drink twice, but also interrupts the work flow at the bar, forcing baristas to stop everything they were doing and deal with the needs of one angry customer.
In summation: Good for you, starbucks, for giving your employees more time to do things at a speed conducive to quality. But don’t expect the number of disruptive complaints to change; until you take away the customer privilege of endless and unwarrented drink do-overs, you are inviting clients to abuse their right to chose.
Was a time when Starbucks had a lock in the “premium” coffee market. Now you can get “premium” coffee nearly anywhere for the same or lower price.
So it makes sense for them to try to differentiate somehow against the competition — quality and service seem reasonable places to do it.
I brew my own coffee in the AM, but for an afternoon cup I like Starbucks well enough if I pass by one. It beats the stuff that comes out of the Keurig machine at work.
Since I only get coffee the potential to be extra frustrating exists for me since I don’t much care what the barristas are doing – the counter help can fill my orders. Now I may have to wait behind the more complex drinks… unless they put in a coffee only express line.
We’ll see.
My greatest frustration is that I usually get half-caf and many shops don’t brew decaf after the morning rush.
I think this is is a good move for Starbucks but not to improve quality. Starbucks is likely suffering from the recession like everyone, so there are fewer people in line which has sped the process up. One of the characteristics that Starbucks tries to foster is it’s atmosphere as a coffee house. Coffee houses have people milling about and they are a place to see other people. If they make their drinks take longer, they can possibly bring this back to their business. I for one don’t really want to go into a store with no one else in it.