Starbucks customers are waiting up to 40 minutes for their coffee, and the chain claims that cuts have left baristas overworked and unable to handle the influx of orders through the chain’s mobile app, in stores and at drive-thrus.
Job cuts and the opening of hundreds of new stores across the country have resulted in Starbucks customers experiencing longer wait times than rivals such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Caribou, according to research data from Technomic and Starbucks. Quoted by Bloomberg News.
About 8% of Starbucks customers waited 15 to 30 minutes after placing their order last quarter — by comparison, virtually no one waited that long for a Starbucks drink before the pandemic.
Starbucks laid off about 29,000 in-store employees between October 2022 and the same month last year while expanding its U.S. operations by opening 380 stores, according to SEC filings.
Starbucks employees also complained that a new company policy requiring baristas to work 12 hours a week reduced the number of workers available at certain stores.
Current employees at the company’s stores say the cuts have put more strain on baristas and caused customers to wait longer than usual.
Chris Mills told Bloomberg News that when he went to a store in Shelton, Connecticut, to pick up an order for his wife on Mother’s Day, he waited 40 minutes for a barista to make him a latte.
He said he was heartbroken to see six baristas trying to fill orders.
“From what I observed, none of the people involved seemed happy, including myself, other customers and even the staff,” Mills told Bloomberg News.
The company denied that stores were understaffed. Starbucks Chief Transformation Officer Frank Britto told Bloomberg News that the coffee chain had implemented new algorithms designed to allocate labor and staffing.
The algorithm calculates data such as order forecasts and product availability, and uses that information to recommend how much staff is needed in a particular location.
But employees told Bloomberg News that the algorithm doesn’t take into account the extra work staff need to do to fulfill special requests for orders, such as adding cold foam or an extra espresso shot.
Starbucks also offers promotions that aren’t calculated by an algorithm when determining how many employees it needs, employees said.
Britt told Bloomberg News that Starbucks has updated its algorithms over the past 18 months to ensure it has “enough capacity to meet demand.”
Asked about Mills’ experience at the Shelton, Connecticut, store, Britt called it “unacceptable.”
“That’s Starbucks’ fault,” Britt said. “We need to do better.”
Starbucks too I posted a blog post The company touts its “staffing precision” technology, which takes into account “past and current trends, promotions and product offerings.”
The company says staff schedules are set three weeks in advance to reduce employee turnover, and that “schedule consistency” means “increased partner retention and satisfaction through stable, consistent schedules.”
Earlier this month, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote a lengthy LinkedIn post urging the company to revamp its US operations, highlighting the need for a “relentless focus on customer experience.”
The company’s most recent quarterly earnings report disappointed Wall Street, sending its shares tumbling about 16%.
The poor performance has increased pressure on Schultz’s successor, Lakshman Narasimhan, who was grilled by CNBC’s Jim Cramer about the company’s earnings results.
Starbucks cited economic headwinds in China and high inflation in the U.S. as factors impacting its earnings.
The company cut its full-year guidance and reported a 15% drop in quarterly net income and a 2% drop in revenue.
