They Used To Grind the Coffee in Starbucks

Howard Schultz wrote a long memo last week that was described in a Wall Street Journal article about customer disenchantment with Starbucks.

Schultz is the company’s chairman, and he warned fellow executives that all of the efficiencies brought on by their rapid growth has diluted the experience, and that they have lost the charm and appeal that once brought customers into their stores.

Blunt talk, but he has a point: Starbucks stores no longer grind coffee, they’ve become “more like a fast food chain, with drive through windows, hot food, and promotions for movies on its lattes.”

Schultz lamented the real cost of flavor locked packaging, which eliminated the aroma and what he calls “perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores.”
The new automatic machines the company installed ‘blocked the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista,’ he wrote.

“We desperately need to look in the mirror and realize it’s time to get back to the core…our success is not an entitlement and now it’s proving to be a reality.”