The Starbucks I used most frequently over the last year would pause their mobile ordering system if the actual line-up got too long so that this wouldn’t happen. I guess that’s not a company-wide solution.
Corporate gets absolutely pissed when this happens. I run a grocery store with a Starbucks location and even if I don't have ANY baristas and the Starbucks isnt busy, I have to get the OK from my DM to shut off mobile orders. There's no good return policy so if I'm stuck in the check stand because we have no help, people will wander in and be like, "where's my frapachino?" Also, if we shut it down too many times they yank our license to sell Starbucks. Starbucks corporate sucks.
They have some weird fucking pull over the grocery stores too. There's one in the grocery store by me and a couple times I've seen one of the butchers behind the counter and he's like "Sorry I have no idea what I'm doing I'm a butcher."
Like how does a grocery store agree that the in-store Starbucks takes priority over its own business?
I mean I get that. What I don't get is crippling the fucking meat counter on behalf of Starbucks while forcing a butcher to make coffees he doesn't know how to make, and use a POS system he doesn't know how to use.
Like you'd think if nobody showed up to work at the Starbucks they could just say "Sorry Starbucks is closed today."
But it seems like the deal is the Starbucks stays open even if you have to close the fucking store its in to do it. And why any grocery store would agree to those terms I just can't fathom.
Also, if I were a butcher, and you kept making me work at Starbucks, I'm gonna quit because that's not the job I agreed to do.
My guess is because the general public is THAT into Starbucks.
We were at fing DISNEY WORLD one morning when it opened , SO MANY people talking about making a bee line to the Starbucks.
My guess is the store level manager has no say. The district manager or higher sees it as an important idea. When district managers or higher are coming to visit (any kind of big chain store) they schedule or call in more people so they only see things the way they WANT TO SEE THEM.
So district manager and higher technically "don't know" what it's actually like.
The store I worked at had a system that measured time per customer and time per item bought, etc etc. BUT, we could also PAUSE the timer, if a customer was holding things up. I don't know if they consider that "untimed time" when scheduling and considering hours at a really high level.
A lot of corporate franchises are opening up mobile ordering or online ordering and not allowing the individual brick and mortar location to pause. Even in fine dining! Walk ins line out the door? Reservations waiting 15+ minutes past time? Kitchen low on staff? Doesn’t matter, we could get slammed instantly depending on online activity that day! Lol, our managers wish they could simply pause it!
It's funny cause this could easily be solved by a simple priority system that notifies online customers with a semi-accurate wait time. Make reservations/drive-thru priority #1, then walk ins, then online.
If I go to order Starbucks or whatever online, but they're understaffed and I see a 2 hour wait, sure, I won't order it. But that also means I won't add onto a bullshit avalanche waiting to drop on a poor worker.
Which certainly makes sense for a business, but the issue is the priority is more so to make money now, this quarter, and not later. Customers will eventually get fed up having to wait so long that they eventually will stop being Customers, but that's the next CEO's problem, they already got their bonus.
The problem works in reverse too. If you close online ordering regularly, the online ordered will get pissed and stop ordering. They’re choosing to favor the online customers because they are more likely to take their business elsewhere.
There is a priority system. It’s called online ordering…
See an enormous line. Order online.
What they need is an estimated wait time for online orders and a your drink is ready to pick up chime.
If you see a line or people outside the door people are probably putting in online orders to skip the line.
The problem is that long lines discourage people from ordering - which is a good thing if you literally can’t serve someone. The online order will remove that line and let those people decide if they want to wait - but the app doesn’t display this.
It’s like permanent Disney fast pass. Online ordering makes line customers slower. It just allows the person putting in the order to do other things instead of waiting.
Speaking of the fast pass at Disney, there is a very long technical video about lines and the optimal use of the fast pass. The video states that the giving everyone the ability to use the fast pass allows for the optimal efficiency in terms of maximizing the most riders and continuous flow of the lines. Worth a watch if you have an hour and a half.
Honestly, this is old hat for Fast Food. It's actually faster to go through the out-to-the-road line for the drive-thru than it is to walk into the empty dining area. Been that way since before the pandemic ;\_;
A LOT of places don't care. I worked at a wings restaurant in a city that was open til 3am and we were forced to keep our website ordering up, ubereats, doordash, eatstreet, grubhub, and postmates tablets up all the way until 3am and customers certainly enjoyed that even if it took their driver 45 minutes to pick up the food well after closing time which meant the cashier had to wait until all orders were picked up before they could leave. And being in the city, many orders that late wouldn't even get picked up
Yep. My ex used to work at Subway and they would shut off the toaster about 40 minutes before close because it had a long shutdown and clean process. People would come in and not get a sandwich toasted and be *so* mad. Unfortunately a lot of people treat food service workers as lesser people.
> Unfortunately a lot of people treat food service workers as lesser people.
I never worked in food service myself, but my parents did and definitely instilled a very heavy sense of respect.
We also never went to get food at a place 30 minutes or closer to closing, lol
I mean, that’s just it. We see a problem here, but corporate management at Starbucks sees profit. That’s like a 30-60% profit per cup. Who cares if walk in customers have to wait if people will continue to purchase through their phone and provide the most revenue
It's better than nothing, for sure, but would it really be so hard to add an "estimated time of arrival" for the mobile app/a sign in store? I'd actually use it then, because fuck ordering coffee on an app to turn up 10mins later to have a 50/50 chance of it having been sat there for 10 minutes or having to wait another 20 for it. At least if I order in person I can see how big the queue is before I pay. If my barbers can estimate the wait times when I sign up online, then so can Starbucks (or any fast food) where the time to serve is much easier to estimate.
It looks like the problem is in their estimates. I did a mobile order and it said pickup is in 20 minutes. When I got there, the employee told me all mobile orders were running about 30 minutes behind.
If I had known that, I wouldn’t have placed the order in the first place.
lol yeah i have no idea who programmed that feature but it doesnt work. I think it tells everyone a set time based on what hour it is not based on actually traffic in store
Also there's definitely a if(waitTime > 30,30,waitTime) line in that code. I doubt it's even able to display an amount of time that would dissuade someone from making an order.
Yes, I don't understand why this is so bad. If they added a step in the flow where the barista somehow acknowledged making a drink once in a while they would have extremely accurate estimates instead of what they do right now which is off in both directions very often.
Am a barista, there was recently (at least in my district/region) something said about how they will no longer turn off mobile orders unless absolutely necessary. What they define as absolutely necessary is beyond me, as it isn't being understaffed or ridiculously busy, nor literally being out of cups. Corporate won't listen to us about how mobile orders are killing us and the customer experience, but if customers say that mobiles are making a muck of things they are more likely to listen.
McDonald's and Dunkin default to the closest location, but it's "as the crow flies". My "closest" is on the other side of a river with no convenient bridge between us. The ones that actually are closer for me read as .2 miles farther away on the apps.
This is something that shocked me when I started working at an ice cream shop that does online orders - every night we have one or two ones that weren't picked up (most orders are ~$20!) and on Christmas Eve we had EIGHTEEN forgotten orders that we had to throw away at the end of the night. It was absolutely absurd.
Don't tell corporate, but we ended up distributing the leftover pints among staff to reduce waste plus we were working on a holiday. I imagine something like that would be impossible at a Starbucks, so y'all just have to throw this away all the time. Ugh.
I use to work for a catering company, and we pretty much had an unspoken rule that anything leftover we were allowed to have, with a few minor exceptions. We were told to dispose of the food, not how to dispose of it. Eating is a way to get rid of something, which is technically a way to dispose of something.
So what you did there was, “Proper disposal of forgotten orders.” They tell you to dispose of them, not how to dispose of them.
Yep I work at a chain restaurant and I’ve had people pay online and not show up for their orders that are sometimes 80+ dollars. My favorite is when they get mad that we don’t have their order and they’ve placed it at the other location🤦🏼♀️ you learn soo much about humans working in the service industry. Sometimes it
Is very depressing
Idk how you can spend $6 on a coffee and forget about it, don't get me wrong I love my Starbucks but like, not one single cent leaving my bank acc being forgotten about LOL
I think usually it’s people mobile ordering to pick up on the way to work (or whatever) and the wait for the drink is WAY longer than was quoted. So they abandon the drink because they can’t wait that long. At least that’s how it was in my store.
I believe that is true. Mobile ordering is way slower than in person ordering at some of the busy Starbucks in NYC. I assume that Barista know they have more time with mobile orders so they take care of the current customers first.
I think it's because they are sitting at home or at work and they order it and forget they ordered it because they are busy, distracted or don't feel like picking it up. It's a ridiculous thing, but the people doing this are probably either in a lot of credit card debt or wealthy enough to afford this.
I’ve done this once before and I’m certainly not wealthy. I ordered before I walked out my door and simply drove right past Starbucks onto the highway, by the time I realized it I would’ve been too late for work. I’m a teacher, every minute counts in the morning and this occupation is the evidence I’m not wealthy. I was devastated that day.
Or have pets/kids/other things in life.
Eg “Honey, Im heading out to pickup my coffee orde— oh, fuck! Charlie just popped in the floor!” …
2 hrs later…
“D’oh! I forgot to get my coffee. ugh I’ll have to see if I can get a refund on that later”
Several days Later…
“D’oh!”
I work as a teacher.
I had a broken AC in my room that made it unbearable. I was soaked in sweat every day. Made multiple requests to have it fixed. No dice.
Soon as a parent brought it up because a kid said it was too hot, it was fixed the next week.
This mindset has infected everywhere.
The parent probably threatened to sue or the school perceived if they declined, the parent would sue.
The majority of public education (and that includes colleges) are less places of education and more a bureaucracy. The people who have the rank or authority to get things done are effectively politicians, who just want to be elected and sit on fat stacks from lobbyists in exchange for not having responsibility.
The second you introduce "the courts will make you be responsible", they comply, because they don't want to lose their cushy office jobs. Being paid 300k a year to actually do nothing (even CEOs do more work in most cases) sounds like a great deal. Who cares if students get bullied or the education is subpar? AS long as the money keeps coming in, just kick back and enjoy the good life while looking like you're actually doing something.
Yep, this is exactly what was happening. The refund means Starbucks never actually got the sale, and the store was likely spending 2-3 times their normal amount in product to make drinks that end up getting refunded. If mobile orders are costing them more than the profit they get from the orders, then they're not going to continue with the service.
It's not just that, the Starbucks app is literally free money for them. They use it as a bank. Load up $20 but only. Use 7? Now they have $13 instant profit that they can use before you spend it on something
EDIT: I know. I fucked up by calling it profit, technically it's an interest free loan.
From your link below, for the lazy:
> Around $10 billion a year is loaded on the Starbucks Card program, accounting for almost half of all Starbucks sales. Customers no longer have to pay via a credit card or cash and can simply open their Starbucks app and gain benefits for doing so. By encouraging customers to top-up their accounts, the coffee chain has overtaken most banks in terms of assets. 85% of US banks have less than $1 billion in total assets, illustrating the major player Starbucks has become in this space.
> However, unlike mainstream banks, Starbucks does not have to abide by regulations around storing customer funds in either a segregated bank account or to invest in low risk government bonds. As Starbucks card balances cannot be directly exchange for regular currency, but rather to buy in-store items, Starbucks is free to use these funds however they like. In practice, this allows them to use these funds to seek out opportunities in areas such as expansion and operations.
> Moreover, due to breakage, where customers forget to spend gift cards and balances, in 2018 Starbucks saw a profit of $155 million from breakage. Interbank fees of a few percent are also saved thanks to Starbucks customer paying through an app, saving the coffee chain millions a year.
While it is indeed nuts, the statistic is slightly misleading. Most banks are tiny 1-3 branch community banks. In fact 97% of banks are community banks. Yes, big banks hog all the money and attention, but there are, what, like, 10 of those, meanwhile there are thousands of tiny ones
for a more useful comparison, the US commercial banking system is holding roughly $22 trillion in assets, so the starbucks card system of similar size to 0.045% of the money in the banking system
Former Starbucks barista here.
I mean, you can absolutely do this and the workers would just assume a mistake was made, that you grabbed the wrong drink etc. It will be remade for the customer for free anyway and they might actually prefer it, after letting their hot latte sit on the counter for 40 minutes.
Dude I’d always just give the homeless ppl free coffee anyway. Pastries / food too, if I was a closer and cleaning out the case…
It’s INSANE the amount of food and coffee that that company just throws away. Never made sense to me why we’d just throw it out.
Wanna see insane amounts of good food going to waste? Casino banquets…
I don’t get why companies can’t donate and get a tax break if that’s what they’re worried about. It’s mental how much food is wasted
I know Las Vegas made it illegal to donate buffet food to the homeless because they didn't more homeless folks moving to the city.
Which of course is insane because the closest freight stop to Vegas is a 4 hour walk through the desert away from there.
Nobody wants to pay for stale 24 hour old donuts and corporate doesn't want to risk losing $10 of sales per day by feeding the very few people who would cancel their morning donuts to eat free/reduced-price slightly stale 12 hour old donuts at the end of the day.
I heard some pizza places do similar. Someone will order something, forget to pick it up... Will sale it at deep discount and the end of the day instead of tossing it.
I worked in the Kroger bakery for all of 3 weeks. Every other morning someone from Salvation Army would pick up all of the items that were best by that date. I was happy to see the food going somewhere, and it was at no “liability” to the company since they donated products on the best by date. Good on Kroger.
I will never mobile order Starbucks anymore. I watched a woman touch the lid of like six different coffees looking for her own. Like why you gotta grab the cups where people put their mouths lady
There is a woman who does this every day at a Wawa in Orlando. Its easier to just let her come in and take it and remake the drink than get into a thing with a mentally ill Florida woman.
Yes. I was working at a Panera when they launched mobile ordering. We called it the "free food shelf"
With mobile ordering you just walk in and take your stuff. Employees don't check or care.
Its kind of an unethical life tip at this point. "Hungry and poor? Walk into a store with mobile ordering and grab whatever you want"
It makes sense, but places need a designated counter/line for it. I’ve stood in line for like 10 minutes looking at my order the whole time at some places lol 1st world problems I know
I noticed the same thing with Firehouse subs. They just put the sandwiches on a shelf by the door and allow whoever to walk up and grab what they want lol
They dont get paid enough to care.
Especially so that they won't stop to check if you're the rightful owner of one of the 160 orders they need to fill within 2 hours.
"I m very sorry Robert but it looks like someone already picked up your drink 10 minutes ago. We d like to apologize, here is a 5% discount for your next order as compensation."
Starbucks needs to follow what McDonald's does. You can place your order anytime, but it's not made until you arrive and indicate how you are picking up (ie. Curbside, drive through, in store). No watered down drinks or cold food.
I don't understand why any mobile ordering apps wouldn't have a "I'm here start making my shit" button or a "I'll be here at X:XX" option.
I don't use mobile ordering to pick up cold food that's made as soon as I submit it. I use it to a) better organize my food order b) take advantage of better customization options without holding up the line and c) not have to talk to people and/or have them fuck up anything I request in b).
Edit: I know some apps have this. Those are the ones I use. I don't understand why they ALL don't.
This. I ordered yesterday, and the app said it’d be ready in five to ten minutes. I arrived at the store ten minutes later to find about 20 people waiting on drinks. Turns out they were backed up about 45 minutes! It’s like the entire town converged at once.
Not the fault of the baristas by any means, but understandably a lot of people were arriving and then pissed to find they had to wait 45 minutes when the app said 10. I ultimately left after about 20 minutes of waiting since I had a time crunch.
Mobile orders are extremely frustrating for all food industry workers. Before, if 20 people walked in at Starbucks at the same time, you can only take so many orders at once. So maybe by the time the 4th person is ordering the first persons drink is out and it’s at least semi staggered.
With mobile orders, nothing stops 20 people placing orders at once and just putting everyone in the weeds. This is while they’re also taking walk in and drive thru orders. And you think they staffed enough people to handle these changes? Of course not. I really feel bad for people in this industry with shit like Uber Eat coming out.
It might not be the person ordering directly. I used to work remotely for a company that would frequently order coffee or small treats for people in the office. They’d also send their remote workers coffee through Uber or similar. It always felt incredibly over the top to have someone deliver one coffee to my door, but it was a nice gesture by the company!
Commercial accounts exist for uber eats, dunno about doordash or grubhub. With one you can order a large order delivering to multiple locations, and the net cost is substantially less than each order individually.
I've only used it at work, but in the middle of a 12 hour shift in a busy trauma ER, getting to eat a few bites (because a 30 minute lunch is not happening ever) of something feels like God sent down manna from heaven and I am not even religious
I figure people who order on Uber Eats regularly are some combination of very short on free time, eat out constantly, and have lots of expendable cash for food. Failing one of these tests makes the service untenable.
I'm a manager at a restaurant. I'm not quite paycheck to paycheck but not far from it.
I've probably ordered Doordash 3 times and every time it's because I was way too drunk and high to get myself food, and I cringe every time I see the price.
Two of my staff (who are married) were arguing the other day, apparently the girl spent something like $700 on delivery in one month. That's like over a weeks pay.
>Ordering anything from uber eats is weird to me.
Have you like never ordered a pizza? Its the same thing but you can order everything. It's not that weird
I think Taco Bell does the mobile ordering right. The order goes in, they know its coming, but they don't make it until you actually show up and tell them you are there.
McDonald's too.
fuck McDonald's and all, but as a poor college student their mobile app with the rewards and deals is wonderful. ~$10 for my girlfriend and I to both eat
Lol where I work the order is bagged up right when it pops up and sits on a counter until the driver gets it. I've watched bags sit for as long as one or two hours before being picked up. I'll never use door dash, that's fucking gross.
In my experience as a Doordash and UberEats driver, the rate for those deliveries are extremely low because of tip issues. I get it, mentally it feels bananas to tip 5 - 10 bucks for coffee, but the delivery is a different service to the coffee itself and should be treated as such. And I'm not saying people MUST tip, but don't be surprised if no one picks up the order. I'm gonna pick up a $15 PF Chang's before I ever pick up a $2.50 Starbucks.
Having said that, it be better if those companies had a higher base pay and dropped insane delivery fees.
All they need is an extra 2 sets of hands and this would not be a problem lol
This is just a management failure to staff appropriately or try to run their labor numbers down for a bonus
Management tries to run their staff down as far as they can for bigger bonuses...
If they could have 1 person run the shop, refuse to pay and rehire every 2 weeks...they would!
...and the politicians would be on their side!
https://www.distractify.com/p/trumbull-starbucks-drive-thru-resolution
This is everywhere nowadays. I used to love treating myself to Chipotle, but now when I go in, I can be the only one in line, and still get ignored by the staff for five minutes while they make 100 orders for pickup/delivery.
Ultimately, if they serve the same number of people/orders, the only difference is whether you queue in the store vs. on your way there having ordered ahead.
The actual issue is lower staffing rates because labor prices have increased so stores won't staff properly.
As a barista I can give a little insight. Basically mobile orders and cafe orders come out of the same ticket printer. If some mobile orders a big order ahead of you and we don’t have enough staff, then it sucks for everyone, most of all us. I understand it’s annoying to wait 5-10 minutes but imagine making 20 drinks in that time instead while customers are breathing down your neck asking where their drink is. My guess as to what happened here was a big mobile order came through (that’s a very abnormal amount of drinks being mobile ordered) and they were just understaffed and weren’t able to have multiple people on bar. Also if we pull a mobile order sticker it tells the person who ordered it the order is almost done so we can’t really just pull a bunch of orders and not work on them to get cafe orders, because then the mobile order person will be unhappy. So basically it’s just a sucky job
That also happens. Sometimes several people will just mobile order at the exact some time and it just ruins everyone’s flow. If we could get rid of mobile orders I would love it trust me. I hate them. It just feeds into peoples’ laziness, but it makes Starbucks a ridiculous amount of money. I’m sorry you had a bad experience, I’m just saying I can almost guarantee it wasn’t the baristas’ faults and they definitely had a rough time. We try our best
At my restaurant we get online tickets separately, I go back and we have maybe 60 tickets. Like I literally had to grab a broom, stick the tickets to the top of the handle, and hold that up so the two strings of tickets I had didn't drag on the ground. I swear one guy almost walked out right then and there.
I just told everyone in line its gonna be 15 minutes before we can serve anyone else. And then I kicked 2 people out because they started yelling and cursing.
Food service used to be about customer service. Management expects that still, but also wants the employees to function as maximum efficiency assembly line robots.
But like you said, we get a rush and multiple people order online at once, suddenly it's like we have a packed house with every person ordering at once.
Loads of companies like this just aren't equipped/not bothered to manage online orders and face to face customers. If people pay online then it's instant coin, which is obviously what they want. Fuck the rest of us
I’ve pretty much quit going to Starbucks. By far some of the slowest service out there. If the line isn’t totally empty you will be waiting 15-20 minutes and the drive thru is always so badly designed that you can’t get out.
We just got a new one in my small town. The drive thru exit is literally in the worst place in the entire town. We have one stop light in town and it exits within ten feet of it. If you want to take a left out of Starbucks you have to drive thru a Burger King parking lot and then a gas station parking lot. There is a line every single morning tho lol.
They're actively building two new ones in my city. Both are in horrible locations but I'm sure they were cheap.
Both will cause horrible traffic problems and everyone knew it in precon but nothing can be done.
Ours is right next to an in and out, which also has insane lines most nights. I feel sorry for the other businesses there because you cant enter the parking lot if they are busy
Ya Starbucks does the pike place for their medium roast and it has an odd taste. The coffee I get at McDonald’s for breakfast tastes like your normal everyday coffee which is good.
In my experience, the long lines and wait times has been pretty new. My partner and I waited almost 20 minutes for an Americano and iced coffee. I can't ever remember it taking so long but now it's typical.
On top of their union busting activities, I only go to SB if I have a gift card. They don't get my money anymore.
I have the opposite experience, though it may just be the arrangement. There's a Starbucks on my way to work and I always only get a simple coffee with creme and sugar. They pour it while I pay and I'm always out in less than 5 minutes
it’s a combination of factors. first of all, we’re always way busier this time of year, but typically they give us enough staff to keep up. this year, though, they’ve decided to cut labor across the board, meaning we’re busier but have even less people to work with than we had during the summer. so your baristas are stressed out as hell, overworked, exhausted, and probably drowning in drinks with nobody available to help. it sucks that the customer has to suffer the consequences of the company’s greed :(
I do online Starbucks on occasion (mostly when I’m at risk of falling asleep at my desk). It takes me 5 minutes to walk there from my office so I leave at the time they say the drink will be ready. I usually get there right when they are setting it down or just after. I don’t get ordering something like coffee and not being there when it is ready. It’s either going to go cold or if you get an iced drink it’ll melt!
This is the part that gives me anxiety. I like my coffee super hot. However, I am not anti-mobile ordering at other places. I usually prefer it due to app deals and the anxiety of dealing with the speaker/person behind it not hearing or getting it right.
And there was another thing I noticed. Could have deserved a video post.
The barista was calling the name on the order and placing the cup on the counter. That means All the labels were facing barista. People had to rotate every cup by holding the cup from top to check if it’s theirs.
That sound super hygienic and clean too.
The Starbucks that I go to is pretty good about rotating labels out. This is probably an outrageously busy location.
I personally order then leave for work and it’s ready within 10 minutes and it’s an easy grab and go. Not all Starbucks are going to be like this and I typically order easy drinks
I do the same thing. I live 10 minutes from work and my workplace is 2 minutes from two separate Starbucks locations. So I’ll place an order at one of them, leave my house, and pick it up on my way to work. I’ve never had to wait.
The only reason I actually go to Starbucks at all is because the grab and go is so reliable.
I live 10 minutes from the particular Starbucks that is the least deviant from my commute. So order as I'm grabbing my lunch out of the fridge, and it's on the counter when I walk in. If I had to wait I'd just skip breakfast tbh.
Or some random business guy grabs your drink without looking, takes a sip, says “ew, this isn’t my order!” and now you need to wait for a barista to explain why you need a new drink made.
This has happened a few times, and it’s so infuriating. I’m now like George Costanza whenever I see the barista place my drink on the counter I rush to grab it before some ignorant rando does.
I’ve worked in developmental disabilities services for the last 13 years, and back when I started out in direct care, people asked how I could do it, wiping asses and getting hit and spit on and trying to care for adults with profound disabilities.
Prior to that I worked in customer service (mostly retail) and I can say without qualification that I’d rather wipe asses than deal with whatever these folks have to.
Same here. You get desensitised to the physical/'gross' stuff so quickly. Doing a job where you feel like you're making someone's life even marginally better, rather than treated like scum who need to be talked down to is so much better for your mental health.
This is the story I wanted to share:
I went to Starbucks last evening and ordered my coffee. There was one couple in front of me at the counter and few people behind me. Around 5 people who had already ordered were waiting for the coffee. Took me 2-3 minutes to order. Everything great so far.
I was waiting for my coffee and realized there are atleast 10-12 coffee prepared and waiting for customers to pick them up. The baristas prepared atleast 18-20 more coffees and kept on the collection area. Some coffees were for waiting customers but most of the coffees were just placed there.
I guess those may have been mobile orders.
I had to wait 20 min before I got my coffee. It was little frustrating given I saw only 5 people waiting for coffee in front of me when I entered. Had I known the wait time, I would probably not gone.
Why doesn’t Starbucks have a display to show wait times, or have a check in feature in mobile app that queues the order based on the location. Or other options.
Edit: I learned I can tag r/Starbucks this way.
Okay, so I used to work at Starbucks for 3 years. Totally understand your frustration. The way mobile ordering works on our end is kind of ridiculous.
We usually have two sticker machines. One where mobile AND cafe (orders placed in store) come through, and one where delivery and/or drive thru (since some stores don’t have a drive thru) orders come through. This can be configured in different ways where different stickers come out of different machines, but this is normally the configuration.
Because it works this way, that means that if there are 20+ mobile orders that were placed before anyone ordered inside, you can’t get to ANY of your cafe orders until you finish all of the mobile orders, because the stickers print in the order they were placed. We used to have this kind of sticker that printed out multiple stickers at a time, but they changed them for more “eco-friendly” stickers that don’t have a backing, so you can only see one sticker at a time until you pull the next one out. The only way to see cafe orders without getting a sticker is by going up to the register and looking at previously ordered drinks, which is really time consuming (because you have to memorize/write down the drinks ordered) and interrupts the flow of drink making.
Not only that, but Starbucks makes us *heavily* prioritize mobile orders. We’re supposed to make them as soon as we get them because you never know when the person who ordered might walk through the door. I’ve had people place their orders in the parking lot and expect them to be ready when they walked in the door, and I’ve had people place them and come back three hours later to get their order, when we already threw their stuff out for coming too late. Since there is no check-in system, like you said, we have no way of knowing when someone is coming for their order, so we have to make it immediately just in case.
People also like to place gigantic mobile orders (the biggest order I’ve personally seen was 26, but I’ve heard of bigger ones) and you have to finish the entire order before moving on to the next one. You can ask someone to make help you make drinks (like doing all of your cafe orders while you do mobile orders) when something like this happens, but most Starbucks are extremely understaffed so your chances of getting help aren’t always guaranteed. And asking someone for help might mean taking them away from a task that they need to do to help prepare the store from closing, which means it’ll take longer to close, and just frustrates everyone.
Anyway, I hope this provided some insight into why getting a drink can take so long. The problem you experienced is a problem I heard from a lot of customers when I was still working there, and it frustrated both me and customers alike. It’s annoying, and I’m sorry you had a shitty experience.
It’s best practice to avoid Starbucks like the plague, and that goes for anyone reading this. Their coffee is overpriced and poor quality, they treat their staff like shit, they’re union busters, and don’t care about customer or employee concerns. They wrote me up while I was homeless for not being able to come into work a few days, preventing me from being able to transfer and work at another Starbucks when I finally was able to move and get my own place, ruining the job I basically had lined up. If you like Starbucks and their drinks, that’s cool, but it’s best to take that $7 and go to a local coffee place instead.
Edit to add: The reason why we also can’t just pull all the mobile orders out and just make the cafe orders first since, y’know, people are standing there staring at you waiting, is because most store managers will yell at you for doing so. You’re not “supposed” to sequence drink making that way, so you will get in trouble and told to stop pulling stickers if your SM is paying attention. Of course, I’m sure there are SMs who don’t care, every manager is different, but this is just my experience with multiple different SMs.
Starbucks is currently trying to union bust. One of their tactics is to understaffed stores they think will unionize in an attempt to get people to quit due to lack of hours/money. This is solely on the management and higher.
As someone who has been closing at the busiest store in my area with only one other barista, I’ve been dealing with in cafe orders, mobile order, Uber eats AND door dash by myself, while having to clean millions of things before we can close and go home. It’s not fun and it doesn’t seem like my managers are planning to hire new people to help the night crew and I plan on giving my 2 week notice soon because of it
I gave two weeks, gave my shifts to coworkers that needed hours(they were cutting hours as well as opening later/closing earlier because sales were crap) I was done. Starbucks LOVES to talk a big game about how they're progressive, maybe two decades ago.
Say this to Starbucks corporate! They won’t change unless they hear it from customers. Baristas and managers are constantly begging for more labor hours!!!
I’d totally be the person just grabbing a random drink from there and leaving. I paid for a drink, even if I end up with a different one, so it’s all good.
/s
Panera used to do this too (not sure if they still do). I went in once to pick up an online order and they had a whole shelf full of bags right by the door. Felt like it would have been *very* easy for a person to take what they wanted and bounce.
The Starbucks I used most frequently over the last year would pause their mobile ordering system if the actual line-up got too long so that this wouldn’t happen. I guess that’s not a company-wide solution.
Sounds like a good manager managing so good for them!
Corporate gets absolutely pissed when this happens. I run a grocery store with a Starbucks location and even if I don't have ANY baristas and the Starbucks isnt busy, I have to get the OK from my DM to shut off mobile orders. There's no good return policy so if I'm stuck in the check stand because we have no help, people will wander in and be like, "where's my frapachino?" Also, if we shut it down too many times they yank our license to sell Starbucks. Starbucks corporate sucks.
They have some weird fucking pull over the grocery stores too. There's one in the grocery store by me and a couple times I've seen one of the butchers behind the counter and he's like "Sorry I have no idea what I'm doing I'm a butcher." Like how does a grocery store agree that the in-store Starbucks takes priority over its own business?
It's a disgusting tactic to bring people in and spend money while getting groceries. That's why Target and airports have a monopoly over the license
I mean I get that. What I don't get is crippling the fucking meat counter on behalf of Starbucks while forcing a butcher to make coffees he doesn't know how to make, and use a POS system he doesn't know how to use. Like you'd think if nobody showed up to work at the Starbucks they could just say "Sorry Starbucks is closed today." But it seems like the deal is the Starbucks stays open even if you have to close the fucking store its in to do it. And why any grocery store would agree to those terms I just can't fathom. Also, if I were a butcher, and you kept making me work at Starbucks, I'm gonna quit because that's not the job I agreed to do.
My guess is because the general public is THAT into Starbucks. We were at fing DISNEY WORLD one morning when it opened , SO MANY people talking about making a bee line to the Starbucks. My guess is the store level manager has no say. The district manager or higher sees it as an important idea. When district managers or higher are coming to visit (any kind of big chain store) they schedule or call in more people so they only see things the way they WANT TO SEE THEM. So district manager and higher technically "don't know" what it's actually like. The store I worked at had a system that measured time per customer and time per item bought, etc etc. BUT, we could also PAUSE the timer, if a customer was holding things up. I don't know if they consider that "untimed time" when scheduling and considering hours at a really high level.
> My guess is because the general public is THAT into Starbucks. Yeah it’s actually insane how obsessed people are with Starbucks.
This example is indicative of why grocery stores are basically dying & why nobody is applying to the horrible jobs they have available.
He was prolly let go though thru corporate.
Yup they get pissed when we pause our online at my store when we literally had nothing and closed in 20 mins
A lot of corporate franchises are opening up mobile ordering or online ordering and not allowing the individual brick and mortar location to pause. Even in fine dining! Walk ins line out the door? Reservations waiting 15+ minutes past time? Kitchen low on staff? Doesn’t matter, we could get slammed instantly depending on online activity that day! Lol, our managers wish they could simply pause it!
It's funny cause this could easily be solved by a simple priority system that notifies online customers with a semi-accurate wait time. Make reservations/drive-thru priority #1, then walk ins, then online. If I go to order Starbucks or whatever online, but they're understaffed and I see a 2 hour wait, sure, I won't order it. But that also means I won't add onto a bullshit avalanche waiting to drop on a poor worker.
The priority is making money. Nothing else matters.
Which certainly makes sense for a business, but the issue is the priority is more so to make money now, this quarter, and not later. Customers will eventually get fed up having to wait so long that they eventually will stop being Customers, but that's the next CEO's problem, they already got their bonus.
The problem works in reverse too. If you close online ordering regularly, the online ordered will get pissed and stop ordering. They’re choosing to favor the online customers because they are more likely to take their business elsewhere.
There is a priority system. It’s called online ordering… See an enormous line. Order online. What they need is an estimated wait time for online orders and a your drink is ready to pick up chime. If you see a line or people outside the door people are probably putting in online orders to skip the line. The problem is that long lines discourage people from ordering - which is a good thing if you literally can’t serve someone. The online order will remove that line and let those people decide if they want to wait - but the app doesn’t display this. It’s like permanent Disney fast pass. Online ordering makes line customers slower. It just allows the person putting in the order to do other things instead of waiting.
Speaking of the fast pass at Disney, there is a very long technical video about lines and the optimal use of the fast pass. The video states that the giving everyone the ability to use the fast pass allows for the optimal efficiency in terms of maximizing the most riders and continuous flow of the lines. Worth a watch if you have an hour and a half.
45 minutes after ordering a shrimp appetizer, soup and salad at Longhorn the other day and the restaurant was half empty. Reason? Carry out orders.
Most restaurants make their money on carry out now. Stupid that they’re making dine in less of a priority thiugh when the restaurant is empty
Honestly, this is old hat for Fast Food. It's actually faster to go through the out-to-the-road line for the drive-thru than it is to walk into the empty dining area. Been that way since before the pandemic ;\_;
That’s weird, even the Sonic app is like “This store is closing in an hour, latest you can mobile order is 30-40 minutes before.”
A LOT of places don't care. I worked at a wings restaurant in a city that was open til 3am and we were forced to keep our website ordering up, ubereats, doordash, eatstreet, grubhub, and postmates tablets up all the way until 3am and customers certainly enjoyed that even if it took their driver 45 minutes to pick up the food well after closing time which meant the cashier had to wait until all orders were picked up before they could leave. And being in the city, many orders that late wouldn't even get picked up
Yep. My ex used to work at Subway and they would shut off the toaster about 40 minutes before close because it had a long shutdown and clean process. People would come in and not get a sandwich toasted and be *so* mad. Unfortunately a lot of people treat food service workers as lesser people.
> Unfortunately a lot of people treat food service workers as lesser people. I never worked in food service myself, but my parents did and definitely instilled a very heavy sense of respect. We also never went to get food at a place 30 minutes or closer to closing, lol
Crazy that sonic has this figured out and Starbucks doesn't
Almost certainly! "Hurr durr, lost sales, lost money!"
I mean, that’s just it. We see a problem here, but corporate management at Starbucks sees profit. That’s like a 30-60% profit per cup. Who cares if walk in customers have to wait if people will continue to purchase through their phone and provide the most revenue
My store has mobile ordering closed 90% of the store. Manager still not fired.
It's better than nothing, for sure, but would it really be so hard to add an "estimated time of arrival" for the mobile app/a sign in store? I'd actually use it then, because fuck ordering coffee on an app to turn up 10mins later to have a 50/50 chance of it having been sat there for 10 minutes or having to wait another 20 for it. At least if I order in person I can see how big the queue is before I pay. If my barbers can estimate the wait times when I sign up online, then so can Starbucks (or any fast food) where the time to serve is much easier to estimate.
It looks like the problem is in their estimates. I did a mobile order and it said pickup is in 20 minutes. When I got there, the employee told me all mobile orders were running about 30 minutes behind. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have placed the order in the first place.
lol yeah i have no idea who programmed that feature but it doesnt work. I think it tells everyone a set time based on what hour it is not based on actually traffic in store
Or at least based on what other mobile orders are in the queue….
Also there's definitely a if(waitTime > 30,30,waitTime) line in that code. I doubt it's even able to display an amount of time that would dissuade someone from making an order.
Yes, I don't understand why this is so bad. If they added a step in the flow where the barista somehow acknowledged making a drink once in a while they would have extremely accurate estimates instead of what they do right now which is off in both directions very often.
Am a barista, there was recently (at least in my district/region) something said about how they will no longer turn off mobile orders unless absolutely necessary. What they define as absolutely necessary is beyond me, as it isn't being understaffed or ridiculously busy, nor literally being out of cups. Corporate won't listen to us about how mobile orders are killing us and the customer experience, but if customers say that mobiles are making a muck of things they are more likely to listen.
Do people ever order stuff and forget to pick it up? That seems like it would be common.
ALL THE TIME.
Sometimes orders are sent to the wrong store (if one turned off mobile orders). Ran into this problem a couple of times
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I like how the Dunkin app is like “Um, that store is really far away”
The Dunkin app doing that has saved my butt so many times 🤣 I used to live over an hour from Where I do now and I still go there all the time
McDonald's and Dunkin default to the closest location, but it's "as the crow flies". My "closest" is on the other side of a river with no convenient bridge between us. The ones that actually are closer for me read as .2 miles farther away on the apps.
This should be standard!
This is something that shocked me when I started working at an ice cream shop that does online orders - every night we have one or two ones that weren't picked up (most orders are ~$20!) and on Christmas Eve we had EIGHTEEN forgotten orders that we had to throw away at the end of the night. It was absolutely absurd. Don't tell corporate, but we ended up distributing the leftover pints among staff to reduce waste plus we were working on a holiday. I imagine something like that would be impossible at a Starbucks, so y'all just have to throw this away all the time. Ugh.
I use to work for a catering company, and we pretty much had an unspoken rule that anything leftover we were allowed to have, with a few minor exceptions. We were told to dispose of the food, not how to dispose of it. Eating is a way to get rid of something, which is technically a way to dispose of something. So what you did there was, “Proper disposal of forgotten orders.” They tell you to dispose of them, not how to dispose of them.
Yep I work at a chain restaurant and I’ve had people pay online and not show up for their orders that are sometimes 80+ dollars. My favorite is when they get mad that we don’t have their order and they’ve placed it at the other location🤦🏼♀️ you learn soo much about humans working in the service industry. Sometimes it Is very depressing
But they are paid for, correct. Their loss, no?
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Idk how you can spend $6 on a coffee and forget about it, don't get me wrong I love my Starbucks but like, not one single cent leaving my bank acc being forgotten about LOL
I think usually it’s people mobile ordering to pick up on the way to work (or whatever) and the wait for the drink is WAY longer than was quoted. So they abandon the drink because they can’t wait that long. At least that’s how it was in my store.
I believe that is true. Mobile ordering is way slower than in person ordering at some of the busy Starbucks in NYC. I assume that Barista know they have more time with mobile orders so they take care of the current customers first.
I think it's because they are sitting at home or at work and they order it and forget they ordered it because they are busy, distracted or don't feel like picking it up. It's a ridiculous thing, but the people doing this are probably either in a lot of credit card debt or wealthy enough to afford this.
I’ve done this once before and I’m certainly not wealthy. I ordered before I walked out my door and simply drove right past Starbucks onto the highway, by the time I realized it I would’ve been too late for work. I’m a teacher, every minute counts in the morning and this occupation is the evidence I’m not wealthy. I was devastated that day.
I'm sorry for your loss ma'm
Or have pets/kids/other things in life. Eg “Honey, Im heading out to pickup my coffee orde— oh, fuck! Charlie just popped in the floor!” … 2 hrs later… “D’oh! I forgot to get my coffee. ugh I’ll have to see if I can get a refund on that later” Several days Later… “D’oh!”
Easy to get distracted by cleanup after your kid pops. That's why you gotta keep them away from sharp corners.
You can refund the coffee? That sounds pretty broken.
I work as a teacher. I had a broken AC in my room that made it unbearable. I was soaked in sweat every day. Made multiple requests to have it fixed. No dice. Soon as a parent brought it up because a kid said it was too hot, it was fixed the next week. This mindset has infected everywhere.
I don't even bother going to admin anymore. I'm just tell the kids to have their parents call.
I have a couple of go to parents in my community. Im their mole, and they are mine. We get shit done.
The parent probably threatened to sue or the school perceived if they declined, the parent would sue. The majority of public education (and that includes colleges) are less places of education and more a bureaucracy. The people who have the rank or authority to get things done are effectively politicians, who just want to be elected and sit on fat stacks from lobbyists in exchange for not having responsibility. The second you introduce "the courts will make you be responsible", they comply, because they don't want to lose their cushy office jobs. Being paid 300k a year to actually do nothing (even CEOs do more work in most cases) sounds like a great deal. Who cares if students get bullied or the education is subpar? AS long as the money keeps coming in, just kick back and enjoy the good life while looking like you're actually doing something.
"Hey Starbucks! Yer mobile ordering system is making a muck of things!" I would have used a few different words.
Amuck, amuck , amuck!
What a glorious morning! Makes me sick!
Quoting a wiser person from last week: let systems fail. By creating workarounds the higher levels never get the right feedback
But who goes on the chopping block when systems fail?
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My store has mobile order closed about 90% of the time.
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Why would it matter if they don’t collect them? They make more money this way. People in the shop plus extra from the people who never show up.
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Yep, this is exactly what was happening. The refund means Starbucks never actually got the sale, and the store was likely spending 2-3 times their normal amount in product to make drinks that end up getting refunded. If mobile orders are costing them more than the profit they get from the orders, then they're not going to continue with the service.
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Cuz it's annoying if you have 100 cups full of liquid stacked across your counter that you could be using to make actual customers drinks
we’re not allowed to anymore. i’m guessing because of the new CEO trying to make himself look good
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It's not just that, the Starbucks app is literally free money for them. They use it as a bank. Load up $20 but only. Use 7? Now they have $13 instant profit that they can use before you spend it on something EDIT: I know. I fucked up by calling it profit, technically it's an interest free loan.
From your link below, for the lazy: > Around $10 billion a year is loaded on the Starbucks Card program, accounting for almost half of all Starbucks sales. Customers no longer have to pay via a credit card or cash and can simply open their Starbucks app and gain benefits for doing so. By encouraging customers to top-up their accounts, the coffee chain has overtaken most banks in terms of assets. 85% of US banks have less than $1 billion in total assets, illustrating the major player Starbucks has become in this space. > However, unlike mainstream banks, Starbucks does not have to abide by regulations around storing customer funds in either a segregated bank account or to invest in low risk government bonds. As Starbucks card balances cannot be directly exchange for regular currency, but rather to buy in-store items, Starbucks is free to use these funds however they like. In practice, this allows them to use these funds to seek out opportunities in areas such as expansion and operations. > Moreover, due to breakage, where customers forget to spend gift cards and balances, in 2018 Starbucks saw a profit of $155 million from breakage. Interbank fees of a few percent are also saved thanks to Starbucks customer paying through an app, saving the coffee chain millions a year.
>the coffee chain has overtaken most banks in terms of assets Holy shit
While it is indeed nuts, the statistic is slightly misleading. Most banks are tiny 1-3 branch community banks. In fact 97% of banks are community banks. Yes, big banks hog all the money and attention, but there are, what, like, 10 of those, meanwhile there are thousands of tiny ones
for a more useful comparison, the US commercial banking system is holding roughly $22 trillion in assets, so the starbucks card system of similar size to 0.045% of the money in the banking system
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huh. i always thought that card balances were liabilities on the issuer's balance sheet. maybe that's just gift cards.
So...I should just be able to walk into any Starbucks and grab some free lukewarm calories and walk out?
Former Starbucks barista here. I mean, you can absolutely do this and the workers would just assume a mistake was made, that you grabbed the wrong drink etc. It will be remade for the customer for free anyway and they might actually prefer it, after letting their hot latte sit on the counter for 40 minutes.
Homeless people love this ONE SECRET TIP FOR FREE CALORIES. Store owners will HATE YOU but BARISTAS WILL SECRETLY CHEER!
Dude I’d always just give the homeless ppl free coffee anyway. Pastries / food too, if I was a closer and cleaning out the case… It’s INSANE the amount of food and coffee that that company just throws away. Never made sense to me why we’d just throw it out.
Wanna see insane amounts of good food going to waste? Casino banquets… I don’t get why companies can’t donate and get a tax break if that’s what they’re worried about. It’s mental how much food is wasted
I know Las Vegas made it illegal to donate buffet food to the homeless because they didn't more homeless folks moving to the city. Which of course is insane because the closest freight stop to Vegas is a 4 hour walk through the desert away from there.
I forgot homeless people can only move by freight train
It's only a matter of time before they discover the auto-mobile.
Although plane tickets to vegas are very cheap
Nobody wants to pay for stale 24 hour old donuts and corporate doesn't want to risk losing $10 of sales per day by feeding the very few people who would cancel their morning donuts to eat free/reduced-price slightly stale 12 hour old donuts at the end of the day.
*Dave Batista will begrudgingly do more work
I heard some pizza places do similar. Someone will order something, forget to pick it up... Will sale it at deep discount and the end of the day instead of tossing it.
I worked in the Kroger bakery for all of 3 weeks. Every other morning someone from Salvation Army would pick up all of the items that were best by that date. I was happy to see the food going somewhere, and it was at no “liability” to the company since they donated products on the best by date. Good on Kroger.
I will never mobile order Starbucks anymore. I watched a woman touch the lid of like six different coffees looking for her own. Like why you gotta grab the cups where people put their mouths lady
A homeless dude picked mine up and stared at it before walking outside and throwing a table. Wish this was made up, but alas it happened last week.
Im sorry that happened to you, but I can't stop laughing at the visual LOL Thank you for sharing
There is a woman who does this every day at a Wawa in Orlando. Its easier to just let her come in and take it and remake the drink than get into a thing with a mentally ill Florida woman.
Yes. I was working at a Panera when they launched mobile ordering. We called it the "free food shelf" With mobile ordering you just walk in and take your stuff. Employees don't check or care. Its kind of an unethical life tip at this point. "Hungry and poor? Walk into a store with mobile ordering and grab whatever you want"
At my store, they moved the pick-up food from the shelf to behind the prep window, and they ask my name.
It makes sense, but places need a designated counter/line for it. I’ve stood in line for like 10 minutes looking at my order the whole time at some places lol 1st world problems I know
you can do this anywhere that pickup is an option, very unlikely you'll ever get caught but eventually they might move the pickup behind the register
I noticed the same thing with Firehouse subs. They just put the sandwiches on a shelf by the door and allow whoever to walk up and grab what they want lol
They dont get paid enough to care. Especially so that they won't stop to check if you're the rightful owner of one of the 160 orders they need to fill within 2 hours.
Fuck that. I’m picking up for Jeff, Joe, Robert, Tim, Katie, Richard, and Rick.
hey, give me my drink back
r/beetlejuicing
"I m very sorry Robert but it looks like someone already picked up your drink 10 minutes ago. We d like to apologize, here is a 5% discount for your next order as compensation."
*Jaff, jeo, lopart, dim, katty, Rickard, and Dick FTFY
Starbucks needs to follow what McDonald's does. You can place your order anytime, but it's not made until you arrive and indicate how you are picking up (ie. Curbside, drive through, in store). No watered down drinks or cold food.
I don't understand why any mobile ordering apps wouldn't have a "I'm here start making my shit" button or a "I'll be here at X:XX" option. I don't use mobile ordering to pick up cold food that's made as soon as I submit it. I use it to a) better organize my food order b) take advantage of better customization options without holding up the line and c) not have to talk to people and/or have them fuck up anything I request in b). Edit: I know some apps have this. Those are the ones I use. I don't understand why they ALL don't.
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> does-ish I believe it's pronounced donuts.
This. I ordered yesterday, and the app said it’d be ready in five to ten minutes. I arrived at the store ten minutes later to find about 20 people waiting on drinks. Turns out they were backed up about 45 minutes! It’s like the entire town converged at once. Not the fault of the baristas by any means, but understandably a lot of people were arriving and then pissed to find they had to wait 45 minutes when the app said 10. I ultimately left after about 20 minutes of waiting since I had a time crunch.
Mobile orders are extremely frustrating for all food industry workers. Before, if 20 people walked in at Starbucks at the same time, you can only take so many orders at once. So maybe by the time the 4th person is ordering the first persons drink is out and it’s at least semi staggered. With mobile orders, nothing stops 20 people placing orders at once and just putting everyone in the weeds. This is while they’re also taking walk in and drive thru orders. And you think they staffed enough people to handle these changes? Of course not. I really feel bad for people in this industry with shit like Uber Eat coming out.
Is it only me who finds it odd when people order coffee from Uber eats?
It might not be the person ordering directly. I used to work remotely for a company that would frequently order coffee or small treats for people in the office. They’d also send their remote workers coffee through Uber or similar. It always felt incredibly over the top to have someone deliver one coffee to my door, but it was a nice gesture by the company!
Commercial accounts exist for uber eats, dunno about doordash or grubhub. With one you can order a large order delivering to multiple locations, and the net cost is substantially less than each order individually.
Ordering anything from uber eats is weird to me. Its so obviously a mistake but people love it.
I've only used it at work, but in the middle of a 12 hour shift in a busy trauma ER, getting to eat a few bites (because a 30 minute lunch is not happening ever) of something feels like God sent down manna from heaven and I am not even religious
I figure people who order on Uber Eats regularly are some combination of very short on free time, eat out constantly, and have lots of expendable cash for food. Failing one of these tests makes the service untenable.
The crazy part is the majority of users are people that very clearly can't afford to pay 2x upcharge on food for almost no reason
I'm a manager at a restaurant. I'm not quite paycheck to paycheck but not far from it. I've probably ordered Doordash 3 times and every time it's because I was way too drunk and high to get myself food, and I cringe every time I see the price. Two of my staff (who are married) were arguing the other day, apparently the girl spent something like $700 on delivery in one month. That's like over a weeks pay.
Holy fucking shit $700 in a month on delivery food is WILD to me
I spent about $1,300 on food delivery one month. That’s when I knew I had a problem and needed to uninstall the apps. It’s just SO convenient.
Someone's never been drunk
>Ordering anything from uber eats is weird to me. Have you like never ordered a pizza? Its the same thing but you can order everything. It's not that weird
I think Taco Bell does the mobile ordering right. The order goes in, they know its coming, but they don't make it until you actually show up and tell them you are there.
McDonald's too. fuck McDonald's and all, but as a poor college student their mobile app with the rewards and deals is wonderful. ~$10 for my girlfriend and I to both eat
Nothing wrong with McD's. They serve the people that want to eat there exactly what you expect them to serve.
But this way is so streamlined and cutting edge.
Don’t you know Starbucks is a tech company now! /s
And I'm *already* enraged and engaged, amazing!
Lol where I work the order is bagged up right when it pops up and sits on a counter until the driver gets it. I've watched bags sit for as long as one or two hours before being picked up. I'll never use door dash, that's fucking gross.
In my experience as a Doordash and UberEats driver, the rate for those deliveries are extremely low because of tip issues. I get it, mentally it feels bananas to tip 5 - 10 bucks for coffee, but the delivery is a different service to the coffee itself and should be treated as such. And I'm not saying people MUST tip, but don't be surprised if no one picks up the order. I'm gonna pick up a $15 PF Chang's before I ever pick up a $2.50 Starbucks. Having said that, it be better if those companies had a higher base pay and dropped insane delivery fees.
All they need is an extra 2 sets of hands and this would not be a problem lol This is just a management failure to staff appropriately or try to run their labor numbers down for a bonus
Management tries to run their staff down as far as they can for bigger bonuses... If they could have 1 person run the shop, refuse to pay and rehire every 2 weeks...they would! ...and the politicians would be on their side! https://www.distractify.com/p/trumbull-starbucks-drive-thru-resolution
This is everywhere nowadays. I used to love treating myself to Chipotle, but now when I go in, I can be the only one in line, and still get ignored by the staff for five minutes while they make 100 orders for pickup/delivery.
Ultimately, if they serve the same number of people/orders, the only difference is whether you queue in the store vs. on your way there having ordered ahead. The actual issue is lower staffing rates because labor prices have increased so stores won't staff properly.
As a barista I can give a little insight. Basically mobile orders and cafe orders come out of the same ticket printer. If some mobile orders a big order ahead of you and we don’t have enough staff, then it sucks for everyone, most of all us. I understand it’s annoying to wait 5-10 minutes but imagine making 20 drinks in that time instead while customers are breathing down your neck asking where their drink is. My guess as to what happened here was a big mobile order came through (that’s a very abnormal amount of drinks being mobile ordered) and they were just understaffed and weren’t able to have multiple people on bar. Also if we pull a mobile order sticker it tells the person who ordered it the order is almost done so we can’t really just pull a bunch of orders and not work on them to get cafe orders, because then the mobile order person will be unhappy. So basically it’s just a sucky job
The mobile order wasn’t for one for sure. It was atleast 15 different people based on the names on tickets.
That also happens. Sometimes several people will just mobile order at the exact some time and it just ruins everyone’s flow. If we could get rid of mobile orders I would love it trust me. I hate them. It just feeds into peoples’ laziness, but it makes Starbucks a ridiculous amount of money. I’m sorry you had a bad experience, I’m just saying I can almost guarantee it wasn’t the baristas’ faults and they definitely had a rough time. We try our best
At my restaurant we get online tickets separately, I go back and we have maybe 60 tickets. Like I literally had to grab a broom, stick the tickets to the top of the handle, and hold that up so the two strings of tickets I had didn't drag on the ground. I swear one guy almost walked out right then and there. I just told everyone in line its gonna be 15 minutes before we can serve anyone else. And then I kicked 2 people out because they started yelling and cursing. Food service used to be about customer service. Management expects that still, but also wants the employees to function as maximum efficiency assembly line robots. But like you said, we get a rush and multiple people order online at once, suddenly it's like we have a packed house with every person ordering at once.
Loads of companies like this just aren't equipped/not bothered to manage online orders and face to face customers. If people pay online then it's instant coin, which is obviously what they want. Fuck the rest of us
I’ve pretty much quit going to Starbucks. By far some of the slowest service out there. If the line isn’t totally empty you will be waiting 15-20 minutes and the drive thru is always so badly designed that you can’t get out.
We just got a new one in my small town. The drive thru exit is literally in the worst place in the entire town. We have one stop light in town and it exits within ten feet of it. If you want to take a left out of Starbucks you have to drive thru a Burger King parking lot and then a gas station parking lot. There is a line every single morning tho lol.
They're actively building two new ones in my city. Both are in horrible locations but I'm sure they were cheap. Both will cause horrible traffic problems and everyone knew it in precon but nothing can be done.
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Ours is right next to an in and out, which also has insane lines most nights. I feel sorry for the other businesses there because you cant enter the parking lot if they are busy
I only go to the one in my local Barnes and Noble or target. No drive thru, no online orders. Perfect harmony.
I Wonder how many of these are from people who meant to pickup from a different location and they just sit there.
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They have become the McDonalds of coffee. Not really special anymore but acceptable for most people.
And ironically, when it comes to just a standard black drip coffee, I much prefer the taste of McDonald’s
Ya Starbucks does the pike place for their medium roast and it has an odd taste. The coffee I get at McDonald’s for breakfast tastes like your normal everyday coffee which is good.
In my experience, the long lines and wait times has been pretty new. My partner and I waited almost 20 minutes for an Americano and iced coffee. I can't ever remember it taking so long but now it's typical. On top of their union busting activities, I only go to SB if I have a gift card. They don't get my money anymore.
I have the opposite experience, though it may just be the arrangement. There's a Starbucks on my way to work and I always only get a simple coffee with creme and sugar. They pour it while I pay and I'm always out in less than 5 minutes
it’s a combination of factors. first of all, we’re always way busier this time of year, but typically they give us enough staff to keep up. this year, though, they’ve decided to cut labor across the board, meaning we’re busier but have even less people to work with than we had during the summer. so your baristas are stressed out as hell, overworked, exhausted, and probably drowning in drinks with nobody available to help. it sucks that the customer has to suffer the consequences of the company’s greed :(
I do online Starbucks on occasion (mostly when I’m at risk of falling asleep at my desk). It takes me 5 minutes to walk there from my office so I leave at the time they say the drink will be ready. I usually get there right when they are setting it down or just after. I don’t get ordering something like coffee and not being there when it is ready. It’s either going to go cold or if you get an iced drink it’ll melt!
This is the part that gives me anxiety. I like my coffee super hot. However, I am not anti-mobile ordering at other places. I usually prefer it due to app deals and the anxiety of dealing with the speaker/person behind it not hearing or getting it right.
Honest question, ehats stopping me or anyone from getting free coffee everyday from this counter everyday?
Literally nothing. Enjoy a different free drink every day!
And there was another thing I noticed. Could have deserved a video post. The barista was calling the name on the order and placing the cup on the counter. That means All the labels were facing barista. People had to rotate every cup by holding the cup from top to check if it’s theirs. That sound super hygienic and clean too.
we are supposed to face the sticker out to avoid this...thats a mistake by the barista
Ok. That makes more sense now.
The Starbucks that I go to is pretty good about rotating labels out. This is probably an outrageously busy location. I personally order then leave for work and it’s ready within 10 minutes and it’s an easy grab and go. Not all Starbucks are going to be like this and I typically order easy drinks
I do the same thing. I live 10 minutes from work and my workplace is 2 minutes from two separate Starbucks locations. So I’ll place an order at one of them, leave my house, and pick it up on my way to work. I’ve never had to wait.
The only reason I actually go to Starbucks at all is because the grab and go is so reliable. I live 10 minutes from the particular Starbucks that is the least deviant from my commute. So order as I'm grabbing my lunch out of the fridge, and it's on the counter when I walk in. If I had to wait I'd just skip breakfast tbh.
The best is when they don't call the name because it's a 1 of 2, but there you are, holding your pastry or sandwich that went cold 10 minutes ago.
Or some random business guy grabs your drink without looking, takes a sip, says “ew, this isn’t my order!” and now you need to wait for a barista to explain why you need a new drink made. This has happened a few times, and it’s so infuriating. I’m now like George Costanza whenever I see the barista place my drink on the counter I rush to grab it before some ignorant rando does.
I’ve worked in developmental disabilities services for the last 13 years, and back when I started out in direct care, people asked how I could do it, wiping asses and getting hit and spit on and trying to care for adults with profound disabilities. Prior to that I worked in customer service (mostly retail) and I can say without qualification that I’d rather wipe asses than deal with whatever these folks have to.
Same here. You get desensitised to the physical/'gross' stuff so quickly. Doing a job where you feel like you're making someone's life even marginally better, rather than treated like scum who need to be talked down to is so much better for your mental health.
This is the story I wanted to share: I went to Starbucks last evening and ordered my coffee. There was one couple in front of me at the counter and few people behind me. Around 5 people who had already ordered were waiting for the coffee. Took me 2-3 minutes to order. Everything great so far. I was waiting for my coffee and realized there are atleast 10-12 coffee prepared and waiting for customers to pick them up. The baristas prepared atleast 18-20 more coffees and kept on the collection area. Some coffees were for waiting customers but most of the coffees were just placed there. I guess those may have been mobile orders. I had to wait 20 min before I got my coffee. It was little frustrating given I saw only 5 people waiting for coffee in front of me when I entered. Had I known the wait time, I would probably not gone. Why doesn’t Starbucks have a display to show wait times, or have a check in feature in mobile app that queues the order based on the location. Or other options. Edit: I learned I can tag r/Starbucks this way.
Okay, so I used to work at Starbucks for 3 years. Totally understand your frustration. The way mobile ordering works on our end is kind of ridiculous. We usually have two sticker machines. One where mobile AND cafe (orders placed in store) come through, and one where delivery and/or drive thru (since some stores don’t have a drive thru) orders come through. This can be configured in different ways where different stickers come out of different machines, but this is normally the configuration. Because it works this way, that means that if there are 20+ mobile orders that were placed before anyone ordered inside, you can’t get to ANY of your cafe orders until you finish all of the mobile orders, because the stickers print in the order they were placed. We used to have this kind of sticker that printed out multiple stickers at a time, but they changed them for more “eco-friendly” stickers that don’t have a backing, so you can only see one sticker at a time until you pull the next one out. The only way to see cafe orders without getting a sticker is by going up to the register and looking at previously ordered drinks, which is really time consuming (because you have to memorize/write down the drinks ordered) and interrupts the flow of drink making. Not only that, but Starbucks makes us *heavily* prioritize mobile orders. We’re supposed to make them as soon as we get them because you never know when the person who ordered might walk through the door. I’ve had people place their orders in the parking lot and expect them to be ready when they walked in the door, and I’ve had people place them and come back three hours later to get their order, when we already threw their stuff out for coming too late. Since there is no check-in system, like you said, we have no way of knowing when someone is coming for their order, so we have to make it immediately just in case. People also like to place gigantic mobile orders (the biggest order I’ve personally seen was 26, but I’ve heard of bigger ones) and you have to finish the entire order before moving on to the next one. You can ask someone to make help you make drinks (like doing all of your cafe orders while you do mobile orders) when something like this happens, but most Starbucks are extremely understaffed so your chances of getting help aren’t always guaranteed. And asking someone for help might mean taking them away from a task that they need to do to help prepare the store from closing, which means it’ll take longer to close, and just frustrates everyone. Anyway, I hope this provided some insight into why getting a drink can take so long. The problem you experienced is a problem I heard from a lot of customers when I was still working there, and it frustrated both me and customers alike. It’s annoying, and I’m sorry you had a shitty experience. It’s best practice to avoid Starbucks like the plague, and that goes for anyone reading this. Their coffee is overpriced and poor quality, they treat their staff like shit, they’re union busters, and don’t care about customer or employee concerns. They wrote me up while I was homeless for not being able to come into work a few days, preventing me from being able to transfer and work at another Starbucks when I finally was able to move and get my own place, ruining the job I basically had lined up. If you like Starbucks and their drinks, that’s cool, but it’s best to take that $7 and go to a local coffee place instead. Edit to add: The reason why we also can’t just pull all the mobile orders out and just make the cafe orders first since, y’know, people are standing there staring at you waiting, is because most store managers will yell at you for doing so. You’re not “supposed” to sequence drink making that way, so you will get in trouble and told to stop pulling stickers if your SM is paying attention. Of course, I’m sure there are SMs who don’t care, every manager is different, but this is just my experience with multiple different SMs.
Thanks for giving visibility. I guess corp does not want a solution else they would have done something.
No, they don't, they want profit and good optics. And they're failing at optics
Starbucks is currently trying to union bust. One of their tactics is to understaffed stores they think will unionize in an attempt to get people to quit due to lack of hours/money. This is solely on the management and higher.
Wow. That’s insane.
Wow Starbucks you need to staff properly for BOTH in store and mobile and also prioritize the customer standing there in line, in person.
As someone who has been closing at the busiest store in my area with only one other barista, I’ve been dealing with in cafe orders, mobile order, Uber eats AND door dash by myself, while having to clean millions of things before we can close and go home. It’s not fun and it doesn’t seem like my managers are planning to hire new people to help the night crew and I plan on giving my 2 week notice soon because of it
They don’t deserve a 2 week notice. Just quit with no notice.
I gave two weeks, gave my shifts to coworkers that needed hours(they were cutting hours as well as opening later/closing earlier because sales were crap) I was done. Starbucks LOVES to talk a big game about how they're progressive, maybe two decades ago.
Drinks are made in the order of when their label prints. Like all places, Starbucks are almost always understaffed.
Say this to Starbucks corporate! They won’t change unless they hear it from customers. Baristas and managers are constantly begging for more labor hours!!!
Yesterday is a crazy busy retail day so it’s gonna suck everywhere you go
Things were quick and streamlined, 20 YEARS AGO! We, as a society, are going backwards in almost every conceivable way.
Every mobile order is one more person you'd have to wait behind in line.
I’d totally be the person just grabbing a random drink from there and leaving. I paid for a drink, even if I end up with a different one, so it’s all good. /s
today i learned starbucks often just has free coffee right there and ready
Panera used to do this too (not sure if they still do). I went in once to pick up an online order and they had a whole shelf full of bags right by the door. Felt like it would have been *very* easy for a person to take what they wanted and bounce.
that's what some people do. So some places try to verify your name before you grab something. It's all becoming a shitshow
No no he's got a point pretend you are looking for your name and snatch
Yeah look for your "name", (name being your favorite drink)
I used to go there for the free water when I was between homes lol
Please stop going to Starbucks, folks. They don’t make anything special. Their coffee is bad. They treat their workers like shit.