I think Starbucks needs to go back to what made them special and different from every other quick serve restaurant: reward customers for coming in & staying a while, being a real 'third place' that brought espresso culture to America, rather than becoming a glorified ghost kitchen lobby for Doordashers to whisk mobile orders away to customers that rightfully don't want to be there. If you don't actually want to support cafe culture, why even have a physical cafe or baristas? Just put up a robotic vending machine that dumps coffee into a cup, it will save customers the grief of thinking the brand actually cares about creating & capturing intangible, experiential value.

I think Starbucks needs to go back to what made them special and different from every other quick serve restaurant: reward customers for coming in & staying a while, being a real 'third place' that brought espresso culture to America, rather than becoming a glorified ghost kitchen lobby for Doordashers to whisk mobile orders away to customers that rightfully don't want to be there. If you don't actually want to support cafe culture, why even have a physical cafe or baristas? Just put up a robotic vending machine that dumps coffee into a cup, it will save customers the grief of thinking the brand actually cares about creating & capturing intangible, experiential value.

https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/the-latest-overhaul-of-starbucksby-the-numbers-fbb57f35?st=vU2GW1&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Software Engineer @ Cadence Design Systems. B4: Stanford EE / Illinois ECE

I mean, maybe Brian Niccol can turn the car around, but then again, I haven't been to Chipotle in years, so I don't really have a basis to be excited. Furthermore, Starbucks seems to have stopped all special offers since he became CEO, which means they really are trying to finally kill the rewards program. There was a glimmer of hope that they would lean into Odyssey NFT program and reward loyalty again, but that was killed last year.
Starbucks is basically a brick-and-mortar bank...so where did the customer service go?