New CEO Brian Niccol is hoping customers will fall back in love with the coffee chain. Here’s why they fell out of love in the first place.
I used to be a near-daily Starbucks drinker. In my early 20s, I commuted to work and stopped at the coffee behemoth almost every morning for an iced caramel latte and a breakfast sandwich. It became a little easier to knock the habit when I started working from home, but I’d still swing through the drive-thru a few times a week for a drink whenever I needed an afternoon boost or was too lazy to drag out my Aeropress. Now, though, I’m rarely at Starbucks, and I’m not the only one.
According to a new report from the New York Times, Starbucks is struggling. The chain has seen declining sales, and foot traffic is down 10 percent over the last year. New CEO Brian Niccol, who joined back in September after leaving his post at Chipotle, is tasked with turning the ship around. At this point though, it’s hard to think that Starbucks could ever rise to the prominence that it had in the early 2000s, when there was no symbol more status-y for a teenage girl than a Starbucks cup — and Starbucks really only has itself to blame.
Starbucks hasn’t had a hit new drink in years
Starbucks has, outside of a few new flavors and latte options, failed to successfully innovate its drink menu over the last decade or so. It’s been easier for fans to order, thanks to the Starbucks app which launched in 2009, and the company has sold lots of collectible cups, but the drinkable innovations Starbucks has launched in recent years have often been roundly mocked, like the olive-oil lattes that allegedly caused gastric distress in baristas and customers alike, inspiring memes. In October, Starbucks announced that it would discontinue the drinks, which didn’t even make it two years on the menu.
This hasn’t always been the case. Starbucks invented the Frappuccino in 1995, and it’s become shorthand for any kind of frozen coffee drink. The pumpkin spice latte debuted in 2003, and it endures as a perennial fall favorite. Starbucks was the first major U.S. chain to put matcha on the menu in 2006, introducing its verdant flavor profile to countless new drinkers. It also helped popularize “cold foam,” or lightly whipped and sweetened cream, in 2014, which has since become a staple of many coffee drinkers’ lattes. Starbucks had its moment in the sun, but at some point along the way, it lost touch with what its customers were actually looking for.
That failure of meaningful innovation is so significant, in fact, that fans took it upon themselves to create exciting new drinks. Starbucks didn’t invent the popular “Medicine Ball” tea or sweet “Pink Drink,” both of which have become staples of the menu — their customers did, and they organically went viral on social media. Unfortunately, leaning into this customizable creativity has, arguably, made the experience at Starbucks worse.
Starbucks stopped being a desirable place to work
Now that customers are so comfortable creating their own drinks in the app — some of which are truly unhinged — baristas are forced to spend extra time preparing drinks that aren’t actually on the menu, and workers say that this creative free-for-all has made their work lives more difficult. And worse, when someone comes in demanding the next “secret menu” viral drink but doesn’t know the ingredients, workers have reported experiencing verbal abuse.
At one time, these were some of the most coveted jobs in food service, thanks to the chain’s extensive benefit offerings and, in comparison with other chains, what used to be a positive, flexible work environment. But workers say that the environment has changed, and at hundreds of stores across the country, they’ve voted to form unions to better address their concerns. “The traditional Starbucks experience is being greeted by name, having a friendly conversation with the barista and given a drink that tastes good,” barista Ari Bray told the Times. “When there is a 15-minute wait and nobody can talk to you because they’re so slammed, that’s not a good experience for anyone.”
Baristas are alleging that they’re overworked, and at stores across the country, workers have gone on strike to protest their working conditions. Their complaints range from excessive heat during brutal Texas summers to “unsanitary” working conditions, along with broader concerns about health care coverage, pay, and benefits.
The company’s anti-union stance didn’t help, either — many people’s opinions on Starbucks have soured as the company has fired organizers and allegedly told unionizing workers in 2022 that they could lose access to benefits if their efforts succeeded. (Starbucks denied the allegation.) Now, Starbucks is at the bargaining table with the union, and while both sides seem to agree that contract talks are progressing, it’s going to take some time for Starbucks to recoup its reputation as a progressive, worker-friendly company, if it ever can.
Starbucks isn’t great for customers, either
Starbucks has to figure out how to be friendlier to customers, too. In an open letter from September, Niccols acknowledged that the current experience “can feel transactional, menus can feel overwhelming, product is inconsistent, the wait too long or the handoff too hectic.”
But it’s hard to know exactly who Starbucks wants as its customer. It pioneered the concept of the “third place,” a place where people actually wanted to hang out outside of their homes and workplaces. The chain officially abandoned this concept in 2022, after multiple controversies involving their bathrooms and complaints about work-from-home types. In that same open letter, Niccol said that the company is “getting back to Starbucks,” with plans to improve the in-store experience, “empower our baristas to take care of our customers,” and generally “tell our story again — reminding people of our unmatched coffee expertise.” But some analysts speculate that Starbucks’s new CEO will help the chain pivot from “craft to convenience,” given his experience at Chipotle, shifting away from its reputation as the best place to get coffee to the easiest.
Starbucks is still the closest coffee chain to my apartment in the Dallas suburbs, but I now find myself driving a few miles out of the way for a latte. There are more independent coffee shops in my city than when my Starbucks habit first formed in the mid-aughts, and I’d much rather pay them 7 bucks for what is almost always a better latte. And if I do want the consistency of a corporate giant, I have more options there, too — Dunkin’ has expanded its footprint in my region in recent years, as have Dutch Bros and 7Brew, the latter two of which offer a more extensive menu of flavors at a similar price.
According to Niccol, the chain is aware of its problems, and they’re “fixable.” So far, announced changes are on the smaller scale: Starbucks has said that it won’t raise prices in 2025. It also announced that it will no longer charge customers for non-dairy milk, a long-demanded change. There are plans, too, to “simplify things for baristas,” like making customers add their own milk and sweetener to brewed coffee.
But if Starbucks really wants to find its way back into our hearts — and our cup holders — it’s got a lot of work to do. It has to find a way to make its stores feel more hospitable, treat its workers better, and bring creative, actually good drinks back to its menu. After all, a coffee chain cannot survive on pumpkin spice lattes alone.
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