Complicated Starbucks Orders Is A Language I Don’t Speak None To Good

Photo by 4028mdk09, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I do not drink coffee. I don’t like coffee. Long before I was medically banned from drinking coffee, I still didn’t like coffee. Personally, a food product whose production is more similar to making asphalt for paving than a tasty, refreshing beverage isn’t for me. Frankly, Starbucks is closer to a milkshake shop than the coffee bars of Europe that the Seattle-based bean slingers cosplay as.

But my family members like Starbucks; thus I dutifully have memorized the 14-word instruction to get my daughter’s favorite Starbuck drink juuuust right, and found its place on the menu for a helpful reminder. Personally, I always order a large ice water which has the benefit of being both free and a rebellion against the asinine pseudo-word sizing the Great Green Coffee Menace tries to foist upon the populations. I do like a few of the food offerings but often they are passed to me so over-microwaved a period of time must pass before actually eating them.

Turns out, the complicated Starbucks orders aren’t just annoying, they are beginning to be a drag on business:

The New York Times:

The answer is always: Add more stuff, which creates ever more complexity, from supply chain to food safety to packaging to scheduling and delivery. Consider outfits like Pizza Hut that once sold only … pizza. Their calculation today is that they’ve got one pizza oven in each store, and they have to keep it hot through the day anyway, so they ask: What else can we run through this thing, and profitably? And oh, it has to be simple enough for teenagers to operate. That’s why pizzerias are now selling flatbreads, chocolate chip cookies, brownies and Cinnabon mini-rolls — anything that can be baked. Because you always want a Cinnabon after you’ve consumed three slices of pepperoni pizza.

Starbucks has to deal with both a complexity issue and a culture issue. Since the company went public in 1992 at $17 a share, Wall Street pressure meant adding more stores, more snacks and sandwiches and more equipment such as an oven for breakfast items and pastries. Drink variations began to expand well beyond plain coffee — hello, pistachio crème Frappuccino. The company would even add alcohol to its upscale cafes to address the evenings — a time of day that was always weak.

Howard Schultz, who essentially created the company, famously envisioned Starbucks as a “third place,” (after homes and offices) where people could gather and talk and sip. He modeled it on Milanese coffee bars. He also promised workers would get a fair wage and benefits. The first Starbucks, opened at Pike Place Market in Seattle in 1971, was and is laughably simple. The décor and the menu were minimal: coffee, tea and spices. But by 1997, Starbucks was selling a variety of foods and drinks. In 2003, it went all in on customization and personalization.

Starbucks seems culturally conflicted between being the equivalent of a charging station for humans and the rest and refuge area that Mr. Schultz envisioned. Trying to do both is complex in and of itself — what kind of ad messaging do you send out, for instance? What food items do you add or delete for the grab-and-go crowd? And from afar, it can be difficult to tell which version you’re heading toward. The Starbucks near my office in Lower Manhattan has opted for the human charging station model: There are no seats in the store; just pick up your drink and go. But there are mornings when I bypass it because the line for both app-ordered and in-person orders is too long.

Starbucks will be yet another case study in a brand shooting to the heights of success, but not knowing how to sustain itself when the mandate from the shareholders is more, more, more and the fundamental rule of investment is “trees don’t grow to the sky” or the blunter “pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.” Starbucks the brand is transitioning from the hot, expanding, cool brand to a legacy brand that’s been around for generational business. Kids who grew up with their parents going are now the parents of their own kids, and so forth. If there was a defined line between being a well-known brand with almost universal recognition and folks getting tired of the brand, then far fewer businesses would fall off Mount Success.

Is it even still cool to work from Starbucks? Was it ever, really?

Starbucks needs to avoid the fate of another legacy brand currently struggling, Subway. At one point Subway rose all the way to the number two spot in fast food, but issues from their spokesperson turning out to be a pedophile to being challenged on their corporate definitions of what constituted “tuna” and “bread” left folks not feeling the need to “eat fresh” at the old familiar sub shop. Oversaturation and suspect franchising agreements haven’t helped, but the biggest problem Subway has is folks have better options with better food for the same price point in the same areas.

There are other issues Starbucks needs to be aware of. The grocery store I primarily use has a Starbucks inside of it. Last year, a standalone Starbucks was built 1000 ft away in the same shopping center. The obvious idea is to get the drive thru traffic the in-store misses, which is all well and good. But there are six other Starbucks within a five-mile radius. That isn’t counting the two Dunkins and seven independent coffee shops. And in about a month a Caribou Coffee is opening in the parking lot of the grocery store that has a Starbucks inside it.

That’s a lot of coffee options, even in a caffeine mad world that seemingly can’t get enough bean water with all the fixings.

More tangible is the expense of it. While a coffee addiction will mean money is no object for some, the idea that coffee for four people is roughly the same amount as feeding those same four people at the surrounding fast-food joints, or creeping ever closer to the cost of a tank of gas at the gas station next door, is a real issue. Starbucks is very much a brand aimed at disposable income of certain economic demographics and is thus susceptible to things like inflation and food prices.

But the biggest problem Starbucks has might be generational. The shopping center I described is right across from the high school. Which is smart business, but over the past year has revealed something else Starbucks has to fight. You rarely ever see teenagers there. They don’t like to go into Starbucks. Too many old people on Facebook hanging around.

Thus is thus as the world keeps turning, grinding away time, lives, and businesses like so many coffee beans. All the whip cream and chocolate drizzle won’t stop it.

Besides, I can get a large ice water anywhere and can over-microwave a sandwich at home. You coffee addicts can fend for yourselves.