✉️ This story was featured in this week’s Coffee News Club
👋 Get the Coffee News Club newsletter in your inbox weekly—sign up.
We’ve talked a lot about Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s turnaround plan, known as “Back to Starbucks,” mostly because, well, so far, it hasn’t exactly gone to plan. The goal is to make the coffee giant’s locations more appealing places to spend time, and this has included adding more comfortable furniture, reducing discounts, and simplifying the menu.
The goal is to revive the chain’s fortunes after several quarters of sluggish sales. Starbucks’ latest quarterly report, released last week, showed an uptick in global same-store sales—stores that have been open at least a year—although U.S. sales remained flat.
However, customers have yet to be convinced to spend time at Starbucks, Redd Brown reports for Bloomberg. Data from Placer.ai showed that more than 40% of visits in 2023 lasted longer than 10 minutes; today, that figure has fallen to about 33%.
“They’ve trained their customer(s) to use this brand as a convenience channel, not as a place where you sit down and linger,” Jon Tower, an analyst with the bank Citi, told Brown.
Starbucks has been refurbishing its stores and says customers are staying longer at newly updated locations. “Early results from uplifted coffeehouses in New York City and Southern California are already showing promise,” a company spokesperson said. “Customers are staying longer, visiting more often, and sharing positive feedback.”
Read more about how people still don’t want to hang out at Starbucks via Bloomberg or via CNBC TV18 here.
Photo by Angela Bailey on Unsplash
