Has Starbucks ‘Lost its Soul’?
on 02.24.07, 06:34am in life • comments (3)
[Seattle Times] Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz’s memo warning top executives that the “Starbucks experience” has been watered down drew rallying cries from workers across the company on Friday. Schultz laments in the Feb. 14 memo that some decisions have resulted in “stores that no longer have the soul of the past.”
“Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee. In fact, I am not sure people today even know we are roasting coffee,” he wrote a week after sending a message to all employees encouraging them not to be disheartened by unspecified negative media and online reports.
I just finished reading this article in today’s Saturday Seattle Times (also covered on ‘Starbucks Gossip‘ and the New York Times), and as a frequent Starbucks customer (and shareholder), I can definitely see where Schultz is coming from.
While I’m still there several times a week, more often than not, their coffee seems to have a ‘burnt’ taste to it ever since they switched over to those automatic brewing machines. I remember before I lived in Seattle, when I was in CT, we used to drive 35 minutes to Westport just to get to the closest Starbucks location almost every weekend - and it was soooooo worth it.
Why?
It was the whole experience. It wasn’t about just getting a cup of coffee someplace other than Dunkin’ Donuts, there was just something fresh and new and wonderful in the air there. Today, with a store on every block, they seem to have forgotten their roots - and it’s why I go to Victors if I want that feeling again.
It’ll be interesting to see how/what Starbucks does to change this.
Randy (February 24, 2007 @ 5:02 pm)
It’s a rock and a hard place issue for them… people complain about long wait times - and baristas about carpul tunnel - so they put in the Coffee-matic 2000. EVERY store has the two-button brewer now. You get the same cup of coffee from a Seattle, WA Starbucks that you do from a Monroe, CT Starbucks. That’s nice in some ways but it’s more of a McDonald’s experience than it is a coffee house experience. At least in the way coffee houses have grown up in the last 10 years.
On the flip side, you take someone like Tully’s (or even Dunkin’) and you simply never know what you’re going to get out of them, which can be annoying: could be great - could be ass. At $4 a cup, I want to know it’s going to be drinkable without having to request a do over. Even Victor’s has it’s off days, because the barista is more worried about where his/her new piercing is going to go, rather than getting your four shots into a cup.
I dunno what they could change… the intimacy is one of the things that gets lost when you grow a chain this size…
Of course, having said that, they COULD take one store in each market and set it free to be a custom store. The Starbucks at Bellevue Place has a Hear Music center - that sets it apart, but it still looks like a Starbucks… they could let the partners in the one custom store make their own design - could help to promote the brand by distinguishing the store. Tough problem to solve, but it sounds like they are aware that something has changed.
ken partridge (February 25, 2007 @ 11:43 pm)
Bottom line they are right, we haven’t been to a Starbucks for quite some time. My wife complained that they are to corporate. You don’t get the people making the coffee who know how to make (or even drink) coffee.
gdkzen (February 26, 2007 @ 6:41 am)
Suggestions to starbucks:
1) Stop using the inside of the stores as stockrooms, and put in more seating. Nothing more annoying than not being able to find a seat while there is a 10 high stack of espresso machines “displayed” in the corner.
2) Start catering to adults more and high school students less. I think that whatever “magic” existed was lost when the place started becoming “the” hangout for kids
3) Stop overroasting the beans! The “starbucks roast” has turned off more customers than it has turned on. It’s not strong coffee, it’s burnt beans - coffee shouldn’t taste like that. Perhaps this is intentional - reduce the palatability of the drip coffee so people will spend their money at the espresso bar. I would take an americano over a drip at Starbucks anytime.
4) Nobody wants a breakfast sandwich that has been sitting behind glass for god-knows-how-long. Stick to pastries.
5) At any point in time, have one employee on the sales floor, solely responsible for the comfort of customers. I don’t want to get in line just to inform the teenager behind the counter that we need more cream.