Many people, much noise. Starbucks cafes are characterized by always being full, a sign of the good functioning of the business that, however, causes tens of thousands of dollars in losses to the company due to the amount of incorrect orders that are served.
The globally recognized coffee chain has begun to implement certain changes in about 1,000 facilities in the US to prevent background noise from causing the message to be lost between the sender (customer) and the receiver (barista). The company has detected that incorrect orders (coffees served in a different way than requested by the customer, for example, and that need to be repeated) amount to tens of thousands of dollars in losses and has found the solution in the installation of insulation materials that improve acoustics and help reduce noise and reverberations to facilitate communication.
The investment in new spaces will be the standard in the American company’s global expansion plans. In the US, Starbucks plans to add around 650 stores in the fiscal year ending in October, and aims to have 20,000 long term, compared to the more than 16,300 it currently has.
The drive-thru (service for ordering from the car) is another part of the plan. According to the company, up to 80% of the new locations in the US that will open until October will have these self-service options since, since the pandemic, this type of interaction has skyrocketed. In fact, reports Bloomberg, the company is building locations dedicated exclusively for pickup or self-service.
An investigation into the problems of incorrect orders that Starbucks requested from the research firm Intouch Insight revealed that orders from the car are inaccurate 14% of the time, so the margin of improvement in this aspect is also key.
