The Many Reasons Your Starbucks Coffee Now Takes 30 Minutes to Make – and the ‘Big Brother’ Tech They’ve Introduced to Speed Workers Up

Starbucks has experienced a significant decline in service speed, with one in 12 customers now waiting between 15 and 30 minutes. This is due to the company’s efforts to cut costs by slashing staffing numbers and rolling out an increasingly complicated drinks menu. The understaffing is partly due to a secret computer program used by Starbucks bosses, which estimates the number of staff needed for each shift based on weather, local events, and past busy and quiet times.

Staff members and their managers argue that this software underestimates the time it takes to make drinks, with each expresso shot taking 26 seconds. Another technology that is upsetting staff is a sinister NBA-style shot clock placed near drive-thru windows, which flashes red if a staff member talks to a customer for more than 30 seconds. Starbucks claims that the clock is for supervisors to see if they need to direct more workers to the drive-thrus.

Techomic, a data company, found that those waiting between five and 15 minutes is up too – from 20% to 31%. Three in five do get their coffee in less than five minutes now, which seems OK. Before the pandemic, four in five served in that time. One in every 50 customers waits more than half an hour.

Starbucks has had a disastrous start to the year, with tens of millions of customers heading instead to rivals or staying at home. A key factor in this is the painfully slow service, which the company’s CEO Laxman Narasimhan admits. Starbucks reported a shock fall in sales for the first time in nearly three years at the start of May, and it was only in November that it reported record takings.

Multiple factors are to blame for this decline, including high prices, customers cutting spending, and bad weather. Starbucks’ growth has come on the back of complicated and customizable drinks like Frappuccinos in the summer and pumpkin spice lattes in the fall, but each can take baristas several minutes to make.

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