Starbucks Links With Amazon Go For First Cashierless Cafe (reuters.com) 38
Starbucks has partnered with Amazon Go, the e-commerce giant's brick-and-mortar convenience store, to open its first ever cashierless cafe. "[C]ustomers can sit at a table with a latte or grab a sandwich from a shelf and walk out," reports Reuters. From the report: Hit by a U.S. labor crunch, Starbucks and other companies are expanding labor-saving technology like artificial intelligence, robotics and digital touch screens. [...] The pandemic pushed people to place more orders online for carry out, delivery and drive-thru. To keep up, Starbucks shifted its development strategy to new store formats, adding pickup-only locations in urban areas, as well as traditional cafes and suburban drive-thrus. Starbucks and Amazon plan to open at least two more U.S. locations together in 2022, said Kathryn Young, Starbucks' senior vice president of global growth and development.
Starbucks baristas will make drinks and the rest of the chain's menu at the new location in New York City, which will have the same staffing level as any other Starbucks, she said. Customers can order through the Starbucks app and grab coffee to go from a counter near the door. Or they can use a credit card, Amazon app or Amazon One palm reader to enter the rest of the space, take snacks from shelves, or sit at tables.
Starbucks baristas will make drinks and the rest of the chain's menu at the new location in New York City, which will have the same staffing level as any other Starbucks, she said. Customers can order through the Starbucks app and grab coffee to go from a counter near the door. Or they can use a credit card, Amazon app or Amazon One palm reader to enter the rest of the space, take snacks from shelves, or sit at tables.
Re: First space with no option... (Score:3)
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When you find yourself saying, "My solution is to ruin it for everyone." you should step back, take a breath, and ask yourself if you're the hero or the villain in the story.
Re: Look for the union label. (Score:2)
Labor crunch my ass (Score:2)
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agreed, the return in the long run is worth just not dealing with the paperwork of a unskilled button pusher, let alone the 5-10 of them per location per year
Re: Labor crunch my ass (Score:2)
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Almost as grim as their bitter coffee.
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Mixed feelings (Score:1)
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, as a California (Bay Area) high tech worker, I do not use cash much these days. It's a PITA to get and all normal shops have e-payment options (have had them, for over a decade). Even the vendors at the local (in city) Farmers' Markets accept visa or venmo.
Yet I realize that I represent just one slice of the population and cash has been the dominant form of currency for centuries... These days its use seems correlated with folks earning cash from their j
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need an change hopper / tube and maybe an bill-acceptor that can make bill change.
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Don't worry about it too much. In San Francisco, poor people also can walk into a store and walk out with whatever they want.
As a former... (Score:4, Insightful)
...longtime Starbucks customer, I have my doubts that this will do anything to actually improve service, or if it does, it'll be minimal, such as taking 40 minutes to get a pre-order coffee, as opposed to 45. I'll stick with Peet's, where I can reliably depend on waiting only a few minutes if I have to wait at all.
Obviously, I've had trouble getting the bitter taste of crap Starbucks service out of my mouth.
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I just don't get the appeal of Starbucks coffee. Of all the big chains it's the worst. I thought maybe Americans like it bitter, but I see plenty of complaints about that around here.
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It used to be good. Strong but very smooth and consistent. These days: zero consistency, bitter from over roasting to even out taste over large batches of beans (burnt), improper cleaning of urns etc....this is all from trying to manage scale. Look at their beans...very very dark.
Now go get some beans from a local roaster. The beans are always a nice toasted brown, not black. Starbucks can't manage thier scale.
I agree with this. Starbucks made some high level management changes several years ago and it has steadily declined since then. In fairness, the pandemic has probably affected its staffing, but I'm not buying that as an excuse for poor training, and poorly run local stores.
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Like McDonalds, they offer (relative) consistency of menu and product. I can walk into any Starbucks and order a medium java chip frappachino like I have for the last 20 years and get the same thing. Just like how I can walk into any McDonalds on the planet and order a Big Mac with small french fries and walk out mostly happy. That's the value.
Time from walk in to coffee drink has more than quadrupled since the early 2000s though, I only frequent there if I'm trapped in an airport and absolutely nee
What's old is new again. (Score:3)
Starbucks has partnered with Amazon Go, the e-commerce giant's brick-and-mortar convenience store, to open its first ever cashierless cafe. "[C]ustomers can sit at a table with a latte or grab a sandwich from a shelf and walk out," reports Reuters. From the report:
I'm waiting for automats [youtu.be] to make a comeback.
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Re: Experience of "going out" is gone (Score:2)
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I suppose that's one plus from COVID. (Score:4, Interesting)
Before COVID, in the Bay Area the anti-tech busybody brigade was trying to ban (With an exception for food trucks, LOL.) cashless payments because something something Amazon Go something something Apple Pay something something $insertConspiracyTheoryHere. The food truck exemption was weird AF. Like... we're going to cater to the paranoid "unbanked" loons who hide their life savings under their mattresses... UNLESS they want a chicken adobo burrito from Senior Sisig, in which case they can fuck off. But whatever.
Apparently someone remembered that because of the unusual cotton/linen "paper" US currency is made of; it is statistically one of the most filthy, germ-ridden, simply disgusting things most of us come into contact with day-to-day. It's a fantastic disease vector... perhaps not for COVID, unless you're a fan of coke and/or ketamine, but a superlative way to spread germs in general. But once COVID became a thing, all of the talk of banning cashless has stopped, at least for now. Hopefully it stays stopped. I want to move forward into the future; not regress to the past. And the luddites and other regressive trying to hold back progress are just... so... irksome.
Revolution! (Score:1)
Re: Revolution! (Score:2)
What if the store's door doesn't let you in unless you've already adopted their payment methods?
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Starbucks' aren't cafés (Score:2)
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Coffee at a cafe is a delight. Coffee at a Starbucks or Costa is like having sand poured down your throat followed by some hot water.
The only reason these shops are successful is the same reason at Apple and Nike are successful, people like displaying their badges of wealth. The "coffee" is terrible, the "phone" is terrible, but the little picture on the product shows that the bearer had some disposable income to waste on it. It doesn't matter if a person or a robot does the serving, all that matters here i
Labour crunch? (Score:2)
Is unemployment in the US zero now?
Really? (Score:2)
Will the computer be able to write completely wrong names on cups as well?
This is how you boil a frog (Score:1)
Evil atop Evil (Score:2)
Amazon is evil because it treats humans like shit.
Starbucks is already partnered with nestle as their sole chocolate supplier. Nestle produces chocolate with child slave labor.
If you give Starbucks money, you are funding evil.
Don't fund evil.
No, I don't shop with Amazon or buy Nestle chocolate products (or anything else they make, unless maybe it's at grocery outlet which means it's already a pullback.)
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