Posts Tagged ‘Culture’
The Worst Starbucks Ever
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, marketing
I found a new Starbucks location (that has assured me they won’t be closing anytime soon) in White Plains, right next to the new Ritz Carlton. Its a swanky joint and reminds me of somewhere that isn’t anything like what I pictured would be going on in White Plains.
I hadn’t planned on writing anything (my life never stops), but I was thinking about my different Starbucks experiences and thought I’d make a note of a few of the good and a few of the bad. Most notably the bad.
Starbucks can be viewed as a microcosm for the world, you find people of all walks of life, all shapes and sizes here, and its a great place to observe how people interact with each other. Particularly the way the baristas interact with customers.
I’d have to say that my favorite Starbucks is across from Yale on Chapel St in New Haven. It has an incredible blend of higher-ed, Ivy League types, statesman, businesswomen, students and your standard toothless chess players. But the real reason for my affinity here is that the customer service is always excellent. “Hi how are you today?” and they wait for a response. You have a conversation with someone, which is often more refreshing than the coffee you’re about to have.
The worst Starbucks I’ve ever been to is in the Biltmore Hotel, Providence, RI. No class, mean spirited baristas (with one exception) and you practically have to beg for a key to the bathroom. In my mind, a key to the bathroom is a rather overt way of seperating people into classes, and making them feel less welcome and important. I mean this place is just mean, and its a great example of why there are so many Starbucks closing. I feel bad for the good people and baristas that actually care, who will be losing there jobs in this upcoming layoff. But not for the rest of them.
Starbucks was created as a place to get a great cup of coffee, and I thought that the notched up prices meant you could get a smile with that. As they grew so quickly, they lost both of those elements, burnt coffee and bitter employees (or was that the other way around). The worst Starbucks isn’t about one particular place, or one bad experience, its about many particularly bad places and thousands of bad experiences.
Coffee can be about the coffee, it can be about the experience drinking it, it can be about the caffeine, it can be about alot of things. But the constant, as with any purchase, is your experience as a consumer. And in the rare chances I get to be the consumer, I’d like my experience to be good.
This isn’t really about Starbucks, its about why they are failing, and how when they stopped focusing on giving people a great coffee drinking experience, they stopped doing what they do best - Making Coffee.
Make coffee people!
