Queuing is a business model for Starbucks, and so is queuing.

"do urban white-collar female elites have to bring a Starbucks into the company in the morning? Just hold a cup and the momentum will come out. In their eyes, the cup is armor, a sword, and Moses himself who can separate the Red Sea. "

Just last week, we reported that Starbucks' same-store transaction volume in the United States fell by 2% in the first quarter of this year due to mobile orders. There are too many customers waiting in line, which has become a worry for Starbucks. At first, Starbucks did mobile ordering to provide consumers with a convenient ordering and payment experience. Unexpectedly, in less than two years, this business has changed from convenience to a burden.

According to Business Insider, many consumers complain on Reddit that the waiting time at Starbucks is still long, sometimes as long as 20 minutes, after using mobile orders and payments. So BI sent reporters to experience a week of mobile orders at several different Starbucks in New York. The result of the experience is that most of the time you need to wait a long time to use mobile payments and place orders, and rarely get coffee within the promised 3-5 minutes.

And what is very confusing is that sometimes it takes as long as 10 minutes to get a mobile order of coffee, even if there is no one waiting in line. I suddenly thought of the classic sentence of fighting landlords: "come on, I'll wait for the flowers to thank you." This is greatly inappropriate for female white-collar workers, if for this cup of "armor" coffee, it is not good to be late to deduct wages. In fact, Starbucks is aware of the current problem and began to adjust the layout of the coffee shop in early March to make more room for mobile phone orders for coffee.

Queuing is a business model, and so is queuing.

Before we explore the solution, let's talk about the queue at Starbucks. Many people should find that Starbucks' team is like a horizontal team with fast fashion brands, but it is also a bit sophisticated, not just to save space in the store. Horizontal assembly lines help one person to pick up guests, and employees who make and give coffee have room for activity.

Starbucks usually puts desserts and mugs on the left-hand side of the counter, and consumers can see these delicious desserts and beautiful cups in horizontal queues. Buying them will boost Starbucks' business, even if they don't buy. you can also pass the time in "lingering".

When ordering food at McDonald's or waiting for the subway, I will unconsciously frown and stretch my head to the front to see why the waiter is so slow and why the bus hasn't come yet. Horizontal queue will not be such a situation, you can see where the staff are, but have a sense of appreciation of how they make coffee, just like an open kitchen, watching the food production process, there will be a sense of experience.

If the vertical queuing of McDonald's and KFC is the embodiment of fast food "speed gene", then this horizontal queuing is the best embodiment of Starbucks "social gene". Maybe in the process of horizontal queuing, some partner will talk to you like-minded. Of course, it is OK to "flirt" with some employee brothers. Don't always be bulletproof with coffee. Occasionally coffee can also be a sharp tool for accosting. Queuing is also a discipline.

However, it seems that this queuing model is changing its nature because of mobile waiting to place an order. Starbucks needs to solve the current queuing problem to save consumers. Currently, after consumers use a mobile order from Starbucks, the service staff will place it in the waiting area after the coffee is made, and then shout the customer's name. In a noisy coffee shop, it takes a lot of ear power to get coffee quickly. It takes up not only space, but also human resources, and it's silly to shout customers' names over and over again.

As a result, Starbucks began to try to open up a small marked area at the counters of some stores for mobile order coffee waiting for owners to claim. In addition, some Starbucks stores also plan to recruit more service staff to handle mobile orders, but these are temporary solutions. Take recruitment, for example, the Starbucks bar is not big, it can hold two or three people, more will look very crowded.

Starbucks' long-term plan

In the long run, Starbucks needs more changes to solve the queuing problem caused by mobile orders. One theory is that Starbucks is likely to remove some of its product cabinets, such as mugs, and sell them only in online shopping malls. The mug is also an important business for Starbucks, and it would be a pity not to see such a beautiful cup in the store.

Another potential solution is to carry out a large-scale overhaul of the store, opening up two different channels, one for consumers who order normally, and the other specifically for consumers who place orders for mobile. However, according to Starbucks, some very crowded stores will take such a large-scale overhaul. Otherwise, the cost will be too high.

From a technical point of view, Starbucks can try to revamp the process by which mobile orders are placed. Appropriate use of McDonald's ideas, the use of mobile phone App to track the location of customers to ensure that the order is ready at the right restaurant and time. When customers are close to the store, they begin to prepare meals. This avoids the problem that people who enter the store can't get the coffee they ordered and that the bar is always occupied by coffee that no one gets. However, such App may invade customers' privacy, and once customers do not turn on the location system, it will be in vain.

Technology is quite forcing Starbucks to reform. It is only after adopting high technology that many industries find their own shortcomings. For service enterprises, to enhance the shopping experience is one of the eternal themes.