Starbucks has lost tens of millions of customers this year after coffee drinkers grew tired of waiting 20 minutes for a drink.
The huge hit to sales led to the old boss being fired, but his replacement is promising to deliver faster coffee in a bid to win back customers.
Brian Niccol, formerly the boss of Chipotle, has promised that customers will receive a brewed coffee within 30 seconds.
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday, the new CEO outlined plans to prioritize speed and efficiency, including dedicated mobile pickup areas.
He said: “You’re going to have an experience where when you come in and interact with the barista, it’s going to be very quick for that brewed cup of coffee.
“I hope we can make you a cup of coffee in 30 seconds.”
Starbucks regular Jasmin Guevara joked: “That seems very, very optimistic considering the utter chaos in most cafes.”
The biggest complaint from customers – along with the high prices – is the ‘ridiculous’ waiting times – with 20 minutes being common for a cup of coffee.
One in twelve customers now waits between 15 and 30 minutes. Before the pandemic, hardly anyone waited that long, according to new figures from industry data experts.
Niccol added that his team is “currently” working on a technology solution that will make mobile order wait times much more accurate.
Chipotle’s CEO Brian Niccol (pictured) promises coffee in 30 seconds
“Today we’re just giving you an estimate: ‘Hey, it’ll be ready in three to five minutes,’” he said.
“What will happen in the future is we’ll say, ‘Rebecca, your drink will be ready at 9 o’clock,’ instead of just having it made while we’re sitting on the counter waiting for people to come.”
In the summer, former CEO Laxman Narasimhan admitted that the chain’s notoriously slow service – which led to as many as one in seven mobile orders being canceled – was a big factor in declining sales.
Niccol, who replaced Narasimhan in September, is guiding Starbucks through a crucial transition. He received a $100 million pay package and will not have to move from his home in Newport Beach, California, to Seattle, the global cafe chain’s headquarters.
It’s the latest in a series of plans Niccol has to turn things around at Starbucks, which has about 17,000 stores in North America.
The new Starbucks boss had said in October that he would simplify the chain’s “overly complex menu” as another way to speed up service.
Niccol was appointed in September after leading Chipotle for six years and said the chain needed to “fundamentally change” its strategy.
The company’s latest earnings report, covering the three months from July to September. showed that turnover had fallen sharply for the third consecutive quarter.
Sales in the US fell 6 percent as cash-strapped customers are increasingly put off by high prices and long wait times for drinks.
“Simplifying the menu can help solve the problem of cafes becoming more stressful and less attractive, but these are not the only issues at play,” Neil Saunders, Managing Director of GlobalData Retail, told DailyMail.com.
“The main issue is that consumers are buying less coffee at Starbucks to save money,” he said.
Offering more promotions doesn’t seem to have worked, Saunders says, and the chain announced in early October that it was scaling back the discounts offered through its mobile app.
“The other issue that exacerbates the problem is that Starbucks has lost track on the value it should be providing,” he added.
‘The cafes are too busy, the lines are too long, and too many of them are not pleasant places to be. “That means some people have defected to rivals, including independent chains.”
CEO Niccol said the company needed to address issues with staffing at coffee shops and the pricing of its drinks and food.
The new Starbucks boss has said he will simplify the chain’s ‘overly complex menu’ in a bid to win back customers amid slumping sales
US sales fell 6 percent last quarter as cash-strapped customers increasingly deterred by high prices and long wait times for drinks
“People love Starbucks, but I’ve heard from some customers that we’ve strayed from our core, that we’ve made it harder to be a customer than it should be, and that we’re not communicating with them anymore,” he says. said in a pre-recorded video after announcing the latest earnings report.
“As a result, some are visiting less frequently, and I think today’s results tell the same story.”
“Starbucks is still a huge company, but its growth engine has stopped turning and it will need to rethink its proposition if it wants to make progress, especially in the North American market,” Saunders added.
It comes as stressed Starbucks workers have complained of chronic understaffing issues, leading to backlogs at coffee shops.
This is evident from an internal investigation BloombergOnly 33 percent of employees at the company’s 10,000 U.S. locations say stores consistently have enough employees.
“All we get is a skeleton staff all the time,” one worker said in comments collected as part of the investigation.