Brian Niccol has been running Starbucks for two years. He just figured out the stores need fixing. That's 730 days of walking past peeling paint and broken chairs before someone mentioned maybe customers notice these things.
The turnaround focused on other stuff first. What stuff? Nobody knows. But definitely not the actual physical locations where people exchange money for coffee. That would've been too obvious. Too simple. Better to spend two years on strategic initiatives and synergistic value propositions while the bathroom door hangs off one hinge.
Cafe makeovers are the next stage. Not the first stage. The next stage. Stage one was apparently pretending the cafes were fine. Stage two is admitting they're not fine but calling it innovation. Stage three will be Brian discovering that coffee tastes matter.
Customer experience is also a focus now. This implies customer experience was not a focus before. For a company that sells coffee to customers. In cafes. Where the experience happens. The experience was just out there freelancing for two years, doing its own thing, unsupervised.
Retail traders will see this headline and think it's bullish. New stage means progress. Makeovers mean investment. These are the same people who bought Bed Bath & Beyond because the bankruptcy filing used premium cardstock. They'll watch SBUX gap up on a promise to repaint walls and they'll call it a catalyst. They'll tell their friends Brian Niccol is playing four-dimensional chess when he's actually just now learning where the mop closet is.
Two years to notice your cafes look like a gas station bathroom is not a turnaround. It's a tour.
Photo by Athar Khan on Unsplash
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