Starbucks Retro

In a bid to salvage some of the legendary goodwill for the brand, controversial Chairman Howard Schultz, who is back at the helm of the coffee giant, has decided to experiment with killing the iconic green, and bringing back a closer-to-the-original twin-tailed Greek mermaid, baring breasts, hence no longer your typically Americanized PG-13 logotype.

I wonder if this nostalgic effort will follow through into a real shift in simple fundamentals Starbucks is clearly getting wrong in the recent past: Service, service and service.

Unless I’m gravely mistaken, the concept of self-service ordering and pickup was possibly championed by Starbucks. With no waiters, an F&B chain has the ability to drive down serious costs of sale. But this always meant, the quality of service from behind-the-counter ‘baristas’ needed to be extraordinary. And more importantly, human, rather than the McDonalds’ upsell-ANYTHING philosophy. (A good example to explain the McMindlessUpsell: I order a medium fries, only to be met by a reflex courteous-with-a-smile response from the McMindless employee ‘Would you like some fries with that sir?’)

My recent experiences with baristas in China, Thailand, England and the UAE have all been consistent. Consistently poor. Either the upsell is the primary focus of attention. Or when you ask for tea, you get a ‘I really recommend the…’ followed by a coffee blend!

This entry was written by Danish Farhan, posted on at 4:25 am, filed under Designness. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.