Was Starbucks
right to make
convenience more
important than
the coffeehouse?
A window that sold more coffee.
A coffeehouse that had to be rebuilt.
What you’re reading.
A Published Reading
A Published Reading is Kill Dull’s judgment of a marketing decision a company has already made, out in the world. It is built from the public record alone: what the company has said, what it has done, and what independent sources have measured. Every source is listed.
The decision goes through the full interrogation: its consequences across the four Ps, twelve Standards, three lenses, the strongest case on each side, and what we don’t know. AI researches and argues both sides. Every finding and the verdict are human judgments. Then it is published, so the judgment is on the record for anyone to read and challenge.
This Reading was made without a word from Starbucks.
How much deeper a Private Reading goes
A Published Reading only sees what a company chose to show. A Private Reading starts from the inside, before the decision is made.
You make the case: the commitment, why you believe in it, and the evidence that matters, including the research, numbers and plans no outsider sees. We interview the people closest to the decision. If something material is missing, we ask. Every Standard is then tested against your evidence, not against assumptions from the outside.
You receive more than a verdict. You receive the reasoning: what the evidence supports, what it doesn’t, what remains uncertain, where the judges agree and where they don’t. Signed, confidential, and yours, while there is still time to change course.
Every commitment puts different things at stake. We follow the consequences through twelve lines of inquiry, each applied once, across the four Ps. Not every Standard matters equally every time. That’s why judgment matters.
- The decision
- Starbucks said yes to building its US stores around speed of access, drive-thru, mobile order and pickup, ahead of the seated coffeehouse. It formalised that order in June 2020; from October 2024 it began to reverse it.
- The bet
- People want their Starbucks faster more than they want somewhere to sit, and the app and the drive-thru can carry the brand.
- The risk
- Without the coffeehouse, Starbucks is an expensive cup of coffee in a queue, and easier to replace.
- Where it starts
- In Place. Its consequences reach Product, Price and Promotion.
- Judged
- As a decision made on 10 June 2020, prepared from 2015, extended in September 2022 and partly reversed from October 2024, as of 13 November 2026.
Faster. Then fewer seats. Then back.
| Toward convenience | Year | Back to the coffeehouse |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | A cozier redesign; stores called “third places” | |
| 2007 | Schultz memo warns of “commoditization” | |
| Mobile Order & Pay nationwide, after a 2014 test | 2015 | |
| First Starbucks Pickup store, New York | 2019 | |
| Up to 400 US closures; Pickup and drive-thrus accelerated | 2020 | |
| Reinvention plan: pickup, delivery, drive-thru-only formats | 2022 | |
| 2024 | Back to Starbucks: “fundamentally change our strategy” | |
| 2025 | Mugs and condiment bars back; Pickup to be sunset | |
| 2026 | Its COO: “Connection and convenience are not tradeoffs” |
The decision
On 10 June 2020 chief executive Kevin Johnson and finance chief Patrick Grismer announced up to 400 US store closures in 18 months and faster growth of drive-thrus and pickup-only stores, the foundation for “a more transformational phase”. It built on Mobile Order & Pay (2015) and was extended after cafés reopened, in the 2022 Reinvention plan. From October 2024, Brian Niccol’s Back to Starbucks reversed the order of priority, not the channels.
The context
Starbucks grew as a coffeehouse it called a “third place”. In 2007 Howard Schultz warned that gains in “speed of service and efficiency” had removed “much of the romance and theatre”. In late May 2020, over 90% of US company-operated sales came through the drive-thru and mobile order, against roughly 60% before COVID-19.
Where it starts
In Place: which stores close, which get a drive-thru, how many seats remain. What the store is for then shapes the drinks, what the price is paid for and what the marketing says.
Competing explanations
Price rises, a boycott from late 2023, discounting and slow service, from staffing, sequencing and complex drinks, could each explain the 2024 decline; the recovery coincides with a price freeze, more labour and new software as well as seats. No public source separates them. The Reading judges the ranking on its logic and evidence, not the sales curve alone.
One decision. Four places it lands.
The decision starts in Place. Its consequences reach the product Starbucks makes, the price it asks and the promotion that brings people in. The four Ps mark where the consequences fall; the Standards judge them.
| P · Figure | Consequence | Evidence | Tension · Unknown |
|---|---|---|---|
Product 30% of menu items to be cut by the end of fiscal 2025 (January 2025) | Convenience reshaped the menu: drinks built in the app, customised, made for the cup holder. | Mobile orders: 31% of US transactions by December 2023, up from 25% two years earlier, and more complicated: add-ons pay more and take more barista time. From 2024 Starbucks cut the menu and brought back mugs, the condiment bar, refills and names on cups. | Tension The customised drink to go grew the business and slowed the bar. UnknownHow much of the slowdown was drink complexity, not order volume. |
Price −5% US comparable transactions, fiscal 2024; ticket +4% (Starbucks) | Convenience sold at a coffeehouse price; as the coffeehouse thinned, the price had less behind it. | Price rises in October 2021 and January 2022. Fiscal 2023: ticket up 6%, transactions up 3%. Fiscal 2024: transactions down 5%. Starbucks then pledged to hold North American menu prices through fiscal 2025, dropped the non-dairy charge and had 40% fewer discounted transactions in that year’s first quarter. Fiscal 2026: transactions up 3.4%, ticket up 3.0%. | Tension Customers paid more for less, then came less often. UnknownHow much of the fall was price, how much experience. |
Place 1,700+ coffeehouses “uplifted” with seating, North America, by end of fiscal 2026 | Where it starts: closures, drive-thrus, pickup-only stores, fewer seats. | June 2020: up to 400 US closures, faster Pickup and drive-thru growth. July 2025: uplifts are meant “to quickly replace thousands of seats we removed”; the 80–90 pickup-only stores to be sunset in fiscal 2026. 627 stores closed in the 2025 restructuring. Roughly half of customers use the drive-thru. | Tension Seats are rebuilt while half of customers use the drive-thru. UnknownWhether uplifts pay back; Starbucks reports a lift, no figure. |
Promotion ≈60% of US company-operated revenue from Rewards members, fiscal 2025 | Convenience moved marketing into the app: member offers, often discounted. | US Rewards 90-day active members: 32.6 million in 2023, a record 36 million in 2026. In October 2024 the chief executive said marketing had to reach beyond Rewards and “tell our coffee story”. “Hello Again”, February 2025, declared “a return to our roots”. | Tension The most valuable channel taught customers to wait for an offer. UnknownWhat brand advertising added to the recovery. |
Comparable sales, transactions, ticket and mobile order share are Starbucks’ US company-operated measures, by fiscal year (ending late September or early October); for fiscal 2020 (Americas) and 2023 to 2025 (North America) Starbucks reports the region and the US together.
Twelve Standards. Every side argued.
Each Standard ends in an interim finding, not a verdict; the findings inform one judgment and are never added up.
Does speed of access matter to the people Starbucks needs?
Roughly half of customers use the drive-thru (October 2026). Mobile order rose from 25% to 31% of US transactions in two years to December 2023. Delivery revenue more than tripled in five years. In the pandemic, convenience channels carried over 90% of US company-operated sales.
Convenience is what most Starbucks customers use. A company that ignored it would have lost them to the drive-thru down the road.
Relevant to the commute is not relevant to everything. Ranking convenience first made Starbucks less relevant to the people who came to stay.
How many customers use both the café and the drive-thru, and which they value more.
Does convenience make Starbucks easier to recognise, or easier to replace?
Starbucks called its stores “third places” from the 1990s. Rivals built on speed: Dutch Bros, a drive-thru chain, grew to 1,136 shops in 2025, with same-shop sales up 5.6%. In 2025 Starbucks judged its pickup-only format “overly transactional, and lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand”.
The app and Rewards are distinctive at scale; few rivals can match them.
A drive-thru window looks like every other drive-thru window. Convenience is what rivals can copy most easily; the coffeehouse was what they had to answer.
Whether customers still see Starbucks as different from faster, cheaper rivals.
Did convenience build what people think Starbucks is worth, or spend it?
Price increases in October 2021 and January 2022, with more planned. Fiscal 2023: US ticket up 6%, transactions up 3%. Fiscal 2024: ticket up 4%, transactions down 5%. Starbucks then pledged to freeze North American menu prices through fiscal 2025 and cut discounted transactions by 40% year on year in early 2025. In October 2025 its chief executive said value perception strengthened “across all generations”.
Convenience saves time, and time is value. Fiscal 2023 shows customers paying more and visiting more.
The price was built on the coffeehouse. Selling the same price through a window spent the reason for it; visits fell when prices kept rising.
How much of the fall in visits was price and how much the experience the price bought.
Can Starbucks claim the coffeehouse while organising itself around the window?
In June 2020 Starbucks said fewer crowds would improve the “sit-and-stay” experience for “third place” occasions. In January 2025 it ended its open-door policy, reserving cafés and restrooms for paying customers, and said its role as a “third place” was unchanged. The 2025 campaign promised “the Starbucks you love is ready”.
Starbucks never claimed to abandon the coffeehouse, and is now rebuilding it in the open: 1,700+ uplifts are visible proof.
Seats removed while the language of the “third place” stayed. A promise of warmth meets a pickup counter.
Whether customers believe the return to the coffeehouse; no public measure exists.
Could Starbucks deliver the speed it promised?
Mobile orders crowded the counter: Howard Schultz described an 8 a.m. visit as “a mosh pit, and that’s not Starbucks”. The union asked for mobile ordering to be switched off during promotions. In October 2024 the chief executive estimated that about half of transactions took under four minutes; by October 2025, over 80% of US stores averaged four minutes or less in the café.
The drive-thru delivered: average peak times of 3 minutes 20 seconds by July 2025. In January 2025 Starbucks said order sequencing, more than capacity, was the bottleneck: execution, and fixable.
It worked once Starbucks added more than half a billion dollars in labour and new sequencing software, years after it put convenience first.
Whether the decision failed, or only its execution.
Did Product, Price, Place and Promotion add up to one company?
Place: closures, drive-thrus, Pickup stores, seats removed. Product: customised drinks for the bag. Price: rising. Promotion: app offers to members. The Reinvention plan in 2022 spoke of “expanding the Third Place experience beyond the physical store”. In October 2025 the chief executive said Starbucks went most “off-brand” in “the cafe and the way that we handled mobile orders”.
Each P pointed the same way: speed, access, personal convenience, all at a premium.
They pointed at a different company from the one the price and the name promised. The premium was a coffeehouse premium.
Whether customers saw one Starbucks or two.
What did convenience build that Starbucks genuinely owns?
The app and Starbucks Rewards: 36 million 90-day active US members in 2026, nearly 60% of US company-operated revenue in fiscal 2025. Mobile Order & Pay since 2014. A sequencing system, Smart Queue, built for every channel at once.
Convenience gave Starbucks an asset few rivals have: a direct, daily relationship with tens of millions of customers, on its own platform.
The relationship is with an app. It is only as loyal as the next offer, and it taught customers to wait for one.
What members would do without offers.
Did putting convenience first make Starbucks more itself or less?
Starbucks grew as an Italian-inspired coffee bar and called itself a “third place”. In 2007 Schultz warned of the “commoditization of our brand”. In 2024 the new chief executive said the company had to “get back to our core identity”. In 2025 it called its pickup-only stores “lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand”.
Starbucks was always also about the cup to go. Speed is part of it.
By the company’s own words, the decision made Starbucks less itself, and it has spent two years, 1,700 uplifts and a restructuring that closed 627 stores becoming itself again.
Whether a Starbucks that customers use mostly from the car can still be a coffeehouse.
What did putting convenience first make it easier to say yes to?
Delivery with Uber Eats (nationwide by 2020) and DoorDash (from 2022). Drive-thru-only and delivery-only formats. Discount-driven offers, later cut back as “proven ineffective”. The 2007 memo shows an earlier yes to efficiency the company later regretted.
Each yes widened access. Delivery and the app are now growing channels the coffeehouse alone could never have built.
It also made it easier to say yes to discounts, to fewer seats, to a menu that kept growing. Starbucks has said yes to efficiency over atmosphere twice, and twice reversed.
What Starbucks will refuse in the name of the coffeehouse.
What happened as Starbucks kept putting convenience first?
US comparable transactions: down 21% in pandemic fiscal 2020, up 3% in 2023, down 5% in 2024 and 4% in 2025, up 3.4% in 2026, after the reversal began. North America operating margin (Americas in 2019): 20.7% in fiscal 2019 and again in 2023, 19.8% in 2024, 11.5% in 2025, 12.0% in 2026 (13.6% before restructuring charges).
In September 2022 Starbucks targeted US comparable sales growth of 7–9% a year to fiscal 2025. It grew 9%, then fell 2% in each of the next two years. Over calendar 2024 and 2025, Dutch Bros, a drive-thru chain, grew same-shop sales 5.3% and 5.6%.
Convenience compounded for years: more mobile orders, more members, more drive-thrus, record sales in 2023.
The costs compounded too: crowded counters, tired baristas, a union, lost visits. It took two years, closures and lower margins to turn the curve.
How much of the recovery the coffeehouse earned, and whether it lasts.
What else had to move for convenience to work?
Labour, equipment and store design had to move with the volume. Union organising began in 2021, with burnout partly fuelled by the app; by November 2025 the union said it represented more than 600 stores. From mid-2025 Starbucks committed more than half a billion dollars of extra labour hours and new sequencing software; in 2022 it had promised equipment that could halve service times. North American coffeehouse operating costs rose from 51.4% of company-operated revenue in fiscal 2024 to 56.4% in 2025, and stayed there in 2026.
Starbucks has now moved the rest: labour, software, equipment. Convenience and coffeehouse can run side by side.
For four years the rest did not move. Volume moved to the app while the bar, the labour and the layout stayed built for a café.
Whether the union contract, unresolved in our record, changes the economics.
What should Starbucks have protected while it moved to convenience?
The seats, by its own account: uplifts are meant “to quickly replace thousands of seats we removed”. The open-door policy, introduced after the 2018 Philadelphia arrests, was ended in 2025. The 2026 target: more than 25,000 café seats added across the US. Both turns cost money: $258 million of Americas store write-downs in fiscal 2020; $592 million of store-closure charges in 2025; $490 million more in North America in 2026, not broken down, as about 250 more coffeehouses closed.
Starbucks protected the coffee, the brand and its customer data. Seats can be put back, and are being put back.
It let the coffeehouse go where it was cheapest to let go. Putting it back costs about $150,000 a store and two years of trust.
What Starbucks now treats as untouchable.
Human Nature. Conditions. Time.
The twelve Standards judge the decision. Three lenses then test whether that judgment will hold: with people, in the world around them, and over time.
People, and the world around them
Evidence can tell us what people did.
It can’t guarantee what people will do next.
The world moves too.
What do people notice, choose and remember?
Roughly half of customers use the drive-thru. Visits from non-Rewards customers fell first in 2024; in July 2025 they grew again for the first time since the pandemic recovery. The new prototype store has 32 seats and a drive-thru.
- Removing friction
- Sometimes removing friction creates value. The app and the drive-thru remove the queue, the wait and the order at the counter. For the commuter that is real value, and they used it: mobile order rose to almost a third of transactions.
- The friction is the value
- Sometimes the friction is the value. The coffeehouse is friction: a seat, a mug, a name written by hand, time spent. Starbucks removed some of it and then paid to put it back. In our judgment, that is what it learned the coffeehouse was worth.
People choose convenience every morning, and Starbucks gave them more of it.
People remember how a place made them feel. A crowded pickup counter is what they remembered.
Whether convenience and the coffeehouse attract different customers or the same customers on different days.
What in the world made convenience the right or wrong choice?
A pandemic closed cafés: in the last week of May 2020, over 90% of US company-operated sales came through the drive-thru and the app, against roughly 60% before COVID-19. Condiment bars removed in the pandemic returned only in January 2025. Prices rose with inflation into 2022. US tariffs reached 50% on Brazilian coffee in 2025, removed in November. Several US cities have banned new drive-thrus.
- Culture
- What could change what this decision means? Remote and hybrid work changed where and when people want coffee, and how much they want a place outside home and work. Whether the “third place” matters more or less after 2020 is not settled.
- Economics
- What changes when people feel richer or poorer? When customers feel poorer, a premium cup through a window is the first thing to feel expensive. Visits fell in 2024 while ticket rose; Starbucks pledged to freeze menu prices through fiscal 2025.
- Technology
- What could technology change about this decision? Technology made the decision possible and is now its repair: Smart Queue sequences café, mobile, drive-thru and delivery orders; Starbucks will test AI at the drive-thru from fiscal 2027 and is exploring recognising customers on arrival.
- Politics
- What could politics or policy change? Cities restricting new drive-thrus, labour law and a union seeking a first contract, and tariffs on coffee all reach the convenience model first: it depends on cars, labour at peak and cheap volume.
- Planet
- What could the physical world change about this decision? Drive-thrus have been restricted partly to cut emissions; single-use cups come with every order to go. A seated coffeehouse with ceramic mugs is the lower-waste format, though no public source measures the difference for Starbucks.
In June 2020 convenience was survival. Few companies would have chosen otherwise.
The pandemic ended; the priority did not. Conditions that justified a turn did not justify a ranking.
Whether the shift in work and commuting since 2020 has changed coffeehouse demand for good.
Over time
Some consequences take longer to show themselves.
Years. Sometimes decades.
What does time do to the ranking?
Convenience growth from 2014 to 2023; decline in 2024 and 2025; recovery in 2026 with both: uplifts and drive-thru, Green Apron Service and Smart Queue.
- Strengthens
- What strengthens? The app, Rewards and the drive-thru: each channel is larger in 2026 than when the decision was made.
- Erodes
- What erodes? The coffeehouse, while it is ranked second: seats, time, the barista’s attention, the reason for the price.
- Compounds
- What compounds? Customer data and habit compound in the app. So did the strain on the bar, until Starbucks added labour and software.
- How far
- How far can the company change without becoming less itself? Far enough to sell half its coffee through a window. Not so far that the coffeehouse becomes optional: that is where, by its own account, Starbucks became less itself.
- What next
- What does this decision make possible next? An integrated business: café, drive-thru, mobile and delivery on one sequencing system and one loyalty programme. That is possible because of the convenience it built, and works, so far, because it brought the coffeehouse back.
Time has kept every convenience channel growing; even Back to Starbucks builds new stores with drive-thrus.
Time showed what convenience erodes without the coffeehouse: visits, warmth, the reason for the price.
Whether the 2026 recovery holds as price rises again.
Dull rarely happens all at once.
Neither does density.
What carried the most weight.
- 1
Starbucks’ own verdict on its own decision. Identity. Established: Starbucks called its pickup-only format “overly transactional” and “lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand”, and said it went most “off-brand” in the café and in how it handled mobile orders. It weighed most because Starbucks acted on it; a new chief executive’s verdict on his predecessors is evidence, not proof.
- 2
Fewer visits at higher prices. Value. Established: US transactions fell 5% in fiscal 2024 while ticket rose 4%. Inference: the price had been paid for an experience the stores were giving less of. Price rises are a competing explanation; we cannot separate the two.
- 3
A promise the stores could not keep. Delivery and Alignment. Established: crowded pickup counters, a union drive partly fuelled by the app, and more than half a billion dollars of labour and new software needed later. Convenience became a promise of speed the bar was not built to keep.
- 4
The cost of putting the coffeehouse back. Stewardship. Established: 1,700+ uplifts to replace seats removed; 627 stores closed, with $592 million of store-closure charges in fiscal 2025. What was cheap to let go was expensive to rebuild.
- 5
Convenience itself was right. Relevance and Ownership, against the verdict. Established: half of customers use the drive-thru; the app and Rewards carry nearly 60% of US company-operated revenue. That is why the verdict is on the ranking, not on convenience.
In May 2020 convenience kept Starbucks trading: over 90% of US company-operated sales came through the window and the app. It built the app, Rewards and a drive-thru half of customers now use; fiscal 2023 was a record. Back to Starbucks keeps every channel; its COO says “connection and convenience are not tradeoffs”. On that view only execution failed: thin staffing and, by Starbucks’ own account, badly sequenced orders. The evidence meets this in part: convenience was right, the ranking was not. Execution explains a slow bar, not thousands of seats removed. The company that says the two are not tradeoffs is the company that, for four years, traded one for the other and called the result off-brand. Unproven: how much of the 2024 decline the ranking caused, against prices, a boycott and slow service.
- The commitment deserves to be made.
- Something consequential remains unresolved.
- The commitment does not deserve to be made in its present form.
Established
- Up to 400 US closures and faster Pickup and drive-thru growth announced 10 June 2020.
- Mobile order rose to 31% of US transactions by December 2023.
- US transactions down 5% in fiscal 2024, down 4% in 2025, up 3.4% in 2026.
- Starbucks called its pickup-only format “overly transactional” and is sunsetting its 80–90 such stores.
- 1,700+ uplifts to replace seats Starbucks says it removed.
Reasonable inference
- Ranking convenience first eroded the experience the premium price was paid for.
- The return of the coffeehouse contributed to the 2026 recovery.
- In our judgment, convenience and the coffeehouse work together only when the coffeehouse is not second.
Unresolved
- How much of the 2024 decline was price, boycott, service or format.
- What uplifted stores earn against their cost.
- Whether the 2026 recovery holds as prices rise again.
- Whether Starbucks and the union reach a first contract.
- Whether post-2020 work patterns have shrunk coffeehouse demand for good.
- 01Relevance
- 02Distinctiveness
- 03Value
- 04Credibility
- 05Delivery
- 06Coherence
- 07Ownership
- 08Identity
- 09Precedent
- 10Compounding
- 11Alignment
- 12Stewardship
- Human Nature
- Conditions
- Time
Interim findings, not verdicts. Nothing is scored or added up: the verdict is one human judgment across the whole decision.
Evidence that uplifted coffeehouses earn no more than stores left as they were.
Evidence that the 2024 decline was almost entirely price or the boycott, with no link to the format.
Evidence that the recovery came from labour and software alone, not from the return of the café.
A sustained recovery led by drive-thru and mobile with café use still falling.
Evidence that customers who use only the drive-thru are more valuable and more loyal than café customers.
The four Ps deserve one verdict.
Convenience deserved a place at Starbucks. It did not deserve first place.
What it does for customers. Convenience gave customers a faster Starbucks: the app, the drive-thru, the order waiting on the counter. Roughly half of them use the drive-thru today. But making convenience more important than the coffeehouse took something away from the same customers: the seat, the mug, the name, a counter that was not a crowd. In our judgment, they paid a coffeehouse price for a pickup window, and in 2024 many came less often.
What it does to the company. It built something Starbucks owns: an app and a loyalty programme that carry nearly 60% of US company-operated revenue. It also made Starbucks easier to replace, strained its baristas and, by the company’s own account, took it off-brand. Undoing the ranking has taken 1,700 uplifts and a restructuring that closed 627 stores, with $592 million of store-closure charges in fiscal 2025.
What weighed most. Identity, Value, Delivery, Alignment and Stewardship. The heaviest is that Starbucks judged the decision itself, and paid to act on it: “overly transactional”, “lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand”. Against them, Relevance and Ownership: convenience was right, and the verdict is not against it. It is against putting it first. As we read it, the June 2020 turn was defensible in a pandemic; keeping the coffeehouse second after it, and extending that order in 2022, was not.
What remains unresolved. Whether the ranking, rather than prices, a boycott or slow service, caused the 2024 decline; no public source separates them. Whether the uplifts pay back. Whether the 2026 recovery holds. Whether the union reaches a contract. Credibility, Precedent, Human Nature, Conditions and Time remain HMM. Distinctiveness, Value, Delivery, Coherence, Identity, Compounding, Alignment and Stewardship are DULL.
Sources
Built from the public record: every source was published by, and opened on, 13 November 2026. AI researched and argued both sides; every finding and the verdict are Kill Dull’s.
- Starbucks experience diluted, warns chief (Schultz memo of 14 February 2007), Associated Press via The Herald, 23 February 2007https://www.heraldnet.com/business/starbucks-experience-diluted-warns-chief
- Starbucks goes nationwide with order-ahead app, CNN Money, 22 September 2015https://money.cnn.com/2015/09/22/technology/starbucks-mobile-order-pay/index.html
- Starbucks to open its first mobile pick-up store, CNBC, 1 November 2019https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/starbucks-to-open-its-first-mobile-pick-up-store.html
- Why U.S. cities like Minneapolis are banning new fast-food drive-thrus, NPR via MPR News, 10 October 2019https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/10/npr-why-u-s-cities-are-banning-new-fast-food-drive-throughs
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- Starbucks Reports Q4 and Full Year Fiscal 2023 Results, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, Starbucks, 2 November 2023https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/829224/000082922423000051/sbux-1012023xexhibit991.htm
- Starbucks mobile orders surpass 30% of total transactions at U.S. stores for the first time, GeekWire, 2024 (day not shown)https://www.geekwire.com/2024/starbucks-mobile-orders-surpass-30-of-total-transactions-at-u-s-stores-for-the-first-time/
- A First Contract Is Finally in Sight for Unionized Starbucks Workers, In These Times, 29 February 2024https://inthesetimes.com/article/starbucks-union-labor-workers-united-sbwu-first-contract
- Starbucks’ US traffic troubles continue, Restaurant Dive, 31 July 2024https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/starbucks-traffic-troubles-continue-q3/722877/
- To fix Starbucks, incoming CEO will have to tackle its mobile app problem, CNBC via NBC News, 18 August 2024https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/fix-starbucks-incoming-ceo-will-tackle-mobile-app-problem-rcna167127
- Starbucks Reports Q4 and Full Fiscal Year 2024 Results, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, Starbucks, 30 October 2024https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/829224/000082922424000051/sbux-9292024xexhibit991.htm
- Q4 fiscal 2024 earnings call, corrected transcript, Starbucks, 30 October 2024https://s203.q4cdn.com/326826266/files/doc_financials/2024/q4/SBUX-Q4-2024-Earnings-Call-Corrected-Transcript.pdf
- Starbucks reversing open-door policy to prioritize paying customers, Good Morning America (ABC News), 14 January 2025https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/food/story/starbucks-reversing-open-door-policy-prioritize-paying-customers-117656479
- Starbucks brings back some policies taken away during COVID, including free refills, CNN Wire via ABC7, 27 January 2025https://abc7.com/15840468
- Q1 fiscal 2025 earnings call, corrected transcript, Starbucks, 28 January 2025https://s203.q4cdn.com/326826266/files/doc_financials/2025/q1/SBUX_Q1_2025_Corrected_Transcript.pdf
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Was Starbucks right to make convenience more important than the coffeehouse?
From 2015 Starbucks built its US stores around the drive-thru, the app and the pickup counter, and from 2024 it began to bring the coffeehouse back. This Reading argues every side of that decision from the public record before the verdict.
AI interrogates.
Humans judge.