Over the last few days, we heard about a new initiative that Starbucks has implemented to improve efficiency and speed in its operations. Here is a quote from a recent Axios article about it. “Starbucks unveiled a new strategy today to reinvent itself inside and out, and to expand around the world…Starbucks plans to spend roughly $450 million to put new equipment in its North America locations to speed up service, cutting down on labor-intensive processes for making drinks and food. These new systems can cut the time it takes to make a Frappuccino by almost a third, and reduce time to cook food.”
Sep 19, 2022·edited Sep 19, 2022Liked by Gad Allon
My river slide remains a classic :)
Gady: your signup has a problem: it says “name must be less than 30 characters” but I couldn’t even put in my last name . Tell coders that names can have more than two words :)
I remember having a conversation with you on Starbucks 4-5 years ago about how mobile ordering was disrupting their queuing system/order flow and if mobile only kiosks were a good idea in high density areas. The issues Starbucks is facing are truly never ending and multi-faceted. Enjoyed the writing on the difficulties of implementing a culture of continuous improvement. And separately because I focus on looking at Starbucks from a financial perspective -- the founder setting financial targets for the next three years a week after hiring a new CEO and promising to give him autonomy to run the business makes absolutely zero sense to me. Especially with their largest growth market (China) facing an incredibly hard to forecast "recovery" from the zero-COVID policies.
This is very interesting and I agree with the river analogy. Also, what I have observed in Starbucks that is it anyways not consistent with their speed. Thus, while their key proposition may be speed, it is not consistently delivered. So, the experience differs from store to store and like the article suggested, may be it is not even known to their own staff that they need to deliver a coffee in 45 seconds. While, the competing cafe such as Cafe Nero focus on offering personalization and repeat customers so they emphasize on one barista taking care of a set of customers in the process of order to hand over the drink. When I compared Cafe Nero, Lavazza, Starbucks, I observed that Starbucks clearly are getting behind the learning curve and their value proposition is getting "spilled" all over in an attempt to increase speed.
My river slide remains a classic :)
Gady: your signup has a problem: it says “name must be less than 30 characters” but I couldn’t even put in my last name . Tell coders that names can have more than two words :)
I remember having a conversation with you on Starbucks 4-5 years ago about how mobile ordering was disrupting their queuing system/order flow and if mobile only kiosks were a good idea in high density areas. The issues Starbucks is facing are truly never ending and multi-faceted. Enjoyed the writing on the difficulties of implementing a culture of continuous improvement. And separately because I focus on looking at Starbucks from a financial perspective -- the founder setting financial targets for the next three years a week after hiring a new CEO and promising to give him autonomy to run the business makes absolutely zero sense to me. Especially with their largest growth market (China) facing an incredibly hard to forecast "recovery" from the zero-COVID policies.
I love the recent focus on coffee!
Gad's coffee dissatisfaction continues
Just kidding! XD I enjoyed being reminded of lean and how you can't top-down that.
This is very interesting and I agree with the river analogy. Also, what I have observed in Starbucks that is it anyways not consistent with their speed. Thus, while their key proposition may be speed, it is not consistently delivered. So, the experience differs from store to store and like the article suggested, may be it is not even known to their own staff that they need to deliver a coffee in 45 seconds. While, the competing cafe such as Cafe Nero focus on offering personalization and repeat customers so they emphasize on one barista taking care of a set of customers in the process of order to hand over the drink. When I compared Cafe Nero, Lavazza, Starbucks, I observed that Starbucks clearly are getting behind the learning curve and their value proposition is getting "spilled" all over in an attempt to increase speed.