The Wall Street Journal has an article today on the recent changes in the coffee making process in Starbucks: (“At Starbucks, Baristas Told No More Than Two Drinks“, October 2010)
Starbucks baristas are being told to stop making multiple drinks at the same time and focus instead on no more than two drinks at a time—starting a second one while finishing the first, according to company documents reviewed recently by The Wall Street Journal. Baristas are also supposed to steam milk for each drink rather than steaming an entire pitcher to be used for several beverages. Other instructions include rinsing pitchers after each use; staying at the espresso bar instead of moving around; and using only one espresso machine instead of two, according to the documents.
The baristas are leery of the improvement and claim that these will clearly reduce their throughput, increasing the waiting times, which Starbucks have been trying to improve for a while (see earlier posts):
Tyler Swain, a barista in Omaha, Neb., who is also a member of the union, worries how he will keep up with volume if he can only complete one drink at a time. “While I’m blending a frappuccino, it doesn’t make sense to stand there and wait for the blender to finish running, because I could be making an iced tea at the same time,” he says. His store has yet to adopt the changes.
Starbucks counters:
Starbucks insists the new procedures will eventually hasten the way drinks are made and lead to fresher, hotter drinks. Steaming milk for individual drinks, for example, “ensures the quality of the beverage in taste, temperature and appearance,” the company documents state, while focusing on just two drinks at a time “reduces possibility for errors.”
First, it is refreshing to see that firm associate operational efficiency with quality (and not only cutting cost and time). Yet, some of these changes have really little to do with the actual quality of the product. One explanation to these changes is Starbuck’s attempt to affect the perceived quality and not necessarily the quality itself. It has been long documented that Starbucks is struggling with its identify, hanging between being the “third place” and the lean effort which nudged Starbucks closer to being a glorified Dunkin Donuts. By changing the coffee-making process to a more individualized one (and less industrial one) Starbucks moves back to its position as the intimate place to have coffee.
This is very much related to the term “labor illusion”, coined by Ryan Buell and Michael Norton from Harvard. In a somewhat different setting they show the following:
While conventional wisdom and operations theory suggests that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become, we demonstrate that when websites engage in operational transparency – signaling the work in which they are engaging – people not only mind the wait less, but actually value the service more.
The next time you go to Starbucks and see the barista twiddling his thumbs watching the blender works – you’ll know why.
[...] Starbucks and the Labor Illusion « The Operations Room [...]
There definitely is a “labor illusion” behind the counter at Starbucks. The stores that get it right are the ones that can combine extraordinary service with the theatrics and art of coffee-making. Because frankly, it’s hard for customers to get upset with a longer wait time when they’re engaged in friendly candor with the barista behind the counter.
Starbucks’ strategy to slow down and focus on quality {or “perceived quality” – although, I’ll argue that the quality and consistency of the beverages have dwindled in recent years…} is a risky one – not only from the customer wait time perspective, but from the fact that specific competencies will need to be in place to pull it off. Because Starbucks’ quality can’t be automated, the actual skill level of the barista is incredibly important. This is the very reason Starbucks says slowing down will improve errors, but it’s also the reason why slowing down may negatively impede overall efficiency. There is a bit of intuition and problem-solving that baristas need to exhibit… the best baristas know what to do with themselves while milk is steaming or blenders are whirling. Twiddling their thumbs would never cross their minds! Even if the new rules prohibit them to start the third drink in queue, they would find constructive ways to maximize the seconds they have. But then again, these are the skilled baristas that already produced the high-quality hand-crafted beverages that Starbucks is remembered for.
When it comes to developing competencies to deliver on a strategic position, Starbucks needs to ensure that the baristas understand that these changes are all for the sake of increasing customer satisfaction. If Tyler from Omaha understood that the one big goal was to create happy customers every single time, then he’d probably realize that standing in front of a blender won’t make anyone happy.