I'm at the new Starbucks in Mequon. I'd love to be able to provide photos, but Starbucks communicated to me their policy that interior photos not be taken without the advance permission of the store manager, and I am respecting those wishes. I'm going to take this opportunity to include some general reflections that I have had about Starbucks lately.
Adding to a series of reflections that no doubt will extend through Tuesday's Blonde rollout, I think it's noteworthy that this fundamental shift for Starbucks represents a movement from emphasizing product distinctiveness to emphasizing systems and standardization. How so, you may ask? I sincerely wonder whether the cafe aspect of specialty coffee is a flash in the pan. If people are soon able to set up reasonably fast wi-fi hotspots on their cell phones, I wonder how many independent coffee shops will manage to survive. The architecture of the new Mequon store includes a drive-thru (see my post of several days ago) and reflects an apparent anticipation of less for-here business, which I find regrettable.
As I grow older and hopefully wiser, I find systems and standardization comforting. For one thing, Starbucks does not have customer service quirks that sometimes seem arbitrary. For example, many independents and even large chain Caribou don't have all drink sizes in both for-here and to-go. Starbucks does. I don't recall ever being told at a Starbucks that my drink order was somehow a mismatch with the cup lineup. In a successful business, the customer's order is never wrong, nor is he or she ever standing in the wrong place (I note that this store's two registers are within two or three feet of each other, so that the customer likely would never have to be told to move to the correct register). At most, the business might tell the customer that it cannot accomodate the customer's wishes as stated, but offer workable alternatives.
