The new way to get your fix at Starbucks
Lesson summary
Hi there, welcome to Plain English lesson number 331. I’m Jeff; the producer is JR; and he has posted the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/331.
On today’s lesson: A new, faster way to get your morning coffee. Starbucks is accelerating its plans to build more pickup-only locations, where you don’t have to interact with a single human to get your morning coffee. The phrasal verb we talk about today is “shake up” and we have a song of the week from the 80s.
New pickup-only Starbucks stores
The world’s biggest coffee chain is preparing to shake up the way you get your morning fix. At a conference last year, Starbucks told investors it would be accelerating its plan toward more pickup-only stores. Prior to COVID, Starbucks had been planning to build pickup-only stores over a three- to five-year time period, but the company will compress that timeline to just eighteen months.
It’s part of a company-wide move toward smaller-footprint stores that have lower operating expenses, but can still accommodate a high volume of orders. But, wait a minute, you might be thinking. Is this the same Starbucks that pioneered the concept of the “third place”? Indeed it is. Years ago, when Starbucks was making higher-quality coffee popular, it positioned its cafes as a “third place” that you could spend time, in addition to home and the office.
Its cafés were designed for either personal or professional time. It would be common to see a creative on his Macbook, a couple on a date, two businesspeople preparing for a meeting, a group of friends catching up, and a single person reading a book with headphones on—all in the same store.
However, that vision masks what Starbucks has become over time. In fact, over 80 percent of the tickets in the US are for take-out only. Many Starbucks cafés have lines out the door of people waiting for orders. To be honest, that ruins the cozy café vibe, when there are crowds of people standing around and baristas yelling out names and orders.
I lived in New York for a few years and I can tell you the majority of Manhattan Starbucks stores are de-facto pickup locations to begin with. Many of the café’s have just a handful of stools, while hundreds of customers come through per hour for their mobile orders or take-out orders.
In the long run, the new Pickup locations may funnel some traffic out of traditional cafés. In that way, they can serve both types of customers better. The Pickup locations can get an order into the hands of an on-the-go customer faster. At the same time, the Pickup locations might draw away some of the foot traffic from the traditional cafés. It’s a win-win.
Starbucks has already experimented with the new format in New York and Toronto. The New York location is near Penn Station, the busiest train station in the US; the Canadian location is in Commerce Court, in Toronto’s financial district.
Here’s how they work. If you’re in the neighborhood, you open the Starbucks app and place a mobile order. Instead of choosing a traditional café, you choose the Pickup location. The app will give you an alert when your order is ready. You walk in, see your name and order on an electronic screen, pick up your order off the counter, and go.
You pay on the app, so there’s no standing in line. There are no crowds, either, since you’re only called to come into the store when your order is ready. The whole process is over in a matter of seconds—perfect for the New Yorker or Torontonian on the go.
Starbucks is also experimenting with more suburban locations, drive-through-only locations, while culling some of its urban stores in places like New York. The company is doing detailed population modelling, trying to estimate how many office workers will be in urban cores and how many stores—and what combination of formats—will be needed to serve them.
The company is also experimenting with more technology in its existing stores. Starbucks’ head of technology Roz Brewer—that’s really his name—said that his team is using artificial intelligence to change the menu boards in traditional stores.
Factors such as the weather, time of day, season, inventory, and popularity might affect the menu display inside the stores. The more people use the app, the more the company can customize the menu options for each consumer inside the app, too. The Pickup locations will push people to use the app for routine transactions, helping the company gather more data on customer preferences.
Starbucks had to shut most of its stores during worldwide lockdowns of early 2020, but over 95 percent of its stores are open now. Stores in China, a big market for its future growth, have been posting strong sales increases. Between now and 2030, even taking into account COVID, the company plans to increase its store footprint by about two-thirds and expand into 20 more countries.
Starbucks app’s popularity
Here’s how popular the Starbucks app had gotten. At the Starbucks on the lower level of the Merchandise Mart here in Chicago, where I used to get off the train to go to work, there’s a counter for app order pickups and a line for traditional orders. Over the counter is a huge sign saying, “save time—order on the app.” And there’s a long line of people waiting for their app orders, while the traditional line was empty!
So I’d be curious about the app-only locations. I know we have a lot of listeners in both New York and Toronto, so if you’ve gotten your Starbucks fix at a Pickup location, let me know how it went in our Facebook group at PlainEnglish.com/Facebook.
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