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Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

about.starbucks.com

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Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#41

Post by gowld »

nine_zeros wrote: post #35
DarkNova6 wrote: post #19

I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.

I am in America - I genuinely liked some of their flavors, fast service, and happy demeanor of baristas. It always felt like a familiar nice escape from the grind. I wrote all that in the past tense because none of the things I liked about starbucks is uniformly available any longer.

It's anything but an escape from the grind.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#42

Post by keiferski »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #19

I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.

Starbucks is pretty popular in Europe, even in places with better coffee. That’s because it’s better thought of as a combination between energy drinks and dessert, not a competitor to third-wave coffee shops or espresso bars. The vast, vast majority of their customers are not buying black coffee.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#43

Post by ecshafer »

jsbisviewtiful wrote: post #12

Feel bad for those employees. In the last 10 years I've gotten Starbucks maybe twice, both times because we were on the road and needed coffee... and it was the only option. A true fall from grace; The drinks are either sugar bombs or taste burnt and corp loves union busting.

> The drinks are either sugar bombs or taste burnt

You can order exactly as much sugar as you want for their drinks. If you order a Cappuccino with milk or a coffee or Americano, there isn't any sugar in any of the drinks.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#44

Post by austinallegro »

deadbabe wrote: post #27
DarkNova6 wrote: post #19

I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.

I go to Starbucks for the co-working vibes, not the coffee. When are small coffee shops going to understand, if you have a 1 hour limit on how long I can sit there on my laptop (if you even allow laptops), I’m not going to go to your shop. Coffee doesn’t matter, it’s all the same shit. Starbucks has never cared if I buy one coffee and then sit there all day.

Thank God for coffee shops that impose time limits, lest patrons visiting for a coffee and a sit-down have to walk on by because the hipsters in their bollock-strangling denim, plaid shirts and a Crossley turntable tucked under their arm are already hogging the place.

Top Tip: Easily avoid said sofa-hogging hipsters. Look for the bike rack full of Penny Farthings outside.

Go to a Workday for your 'co-working vibes'. Take your Macbook Air and Crossley portable turntables with you as well.

Sincerely,

All the other coffee shop patrons.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#45

Post by paxys »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #19

I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.

In the US Starbucks is almost always the cheapest option in the area for decent coffee.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#48

Post by andrewmcwatters »

brk wrote: post #31

This corporate word substitution bullshit really needs to die. Nobody on the receiving end of this is a "partner". Partner implies some amount of equality in things, a voice, a considered opinion. The people being cut almost certainly did not want to be cut, and I would wager none of them were asked for their input. Zero "partners" are impacted by this. The people impacted are employees. Also, Starbucks do not operat…

I have noticed for well over a decade or more, perhaps 20 years or longer, really, I'm not sure when it started, but companies are reluctant to call people "employees."

Edit: I'm too young for this, but it's along the lines of Personnel from the '60s becoming Human Resources in the '70s and '80s, and Human Resources from the '90s and '00s now becoming People Operations in the '10s and '20s.

I suspect in the '30s it'll change again. Maybe one day there will be a culture change towards boring and we'll just call people "customers," "employees," and the departments responsible for hiring the "Hiring Department."

And people will get mad about that, too, because the HD will be responsible for the paperwork required to fire people, too.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#49

Post by ethagnawl »

strongpigeon wrote: post #8

Really surprised about the closing of Starbucks Reserve in Seattle. That place was always bursting at the seams and must have had a major halo effect for the brand. It's hard not to associate the closure with its recent unionization.

I absolutely believe that the Reserve location in Seattle was busy and can second that those locations had a halo effect for the larger brand.

I've only been to the Reserve location in Midtown Manhattan once and it was very different experience than your run-of-the-mill location. Specifically, I had a drink replaced without asking because the barista said it had "died" while I was in the (nice, clean, great smelling) restroom. Overall, it was just a nice, pleasant experience and I definitely would have frequented that location if I was working in that area regularly. I wonder if this shop was a union one? That might explain why everyone was so pleasant and why it seems to have been closed.

Re: Starbucks: Location closures and elimination of roles

#50

Post by jzebedee »

danudey wrote: post #39
DarkNova6 wrote: post #19

I never understood Starbucks. I live in Europe, we have good coffee places everywhere. They are cheaper and serve significantly better coffee. I can't think of anything I ordered from Starbucks that didn't taste artificial.

I live in Canada and the main reason I like Starbucks is that its consistent. It's not great coffee or great pastries or great whatever else, but it's always the same. We have other chains here, like Blenz, which are franchised rather than corporate, and the quality is hit or miss. I went to a Blenz location once and got a drink far better than anything else I've had in the city, but most of the time I go there I get…

Interestingly, this was the marketing behind Koala Kare's rise to a monopoly over the bathroom baby changing station:

> Business owners just couldn’t see the use case for changing stations. Hilger says he was trying to sell the device to “men in their 50s who never changed a diaper in their life.”

> A new brochure — this one depicting a woman on her hands and knees changing her baby’s diaper on a disgusting bathroom floor– did the trick. “We had to make them feel guilty,” Hilger says.

https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/koala-baby-changing-station/

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