Written by Waylon Cunningham
(Reuters) – Starbucks’ new CEO Brian Nicol is having a hard time at work.
Tasked with reassuring investors that the company’s cafes are still very popular in the United States, Nicol also has to contend with baristas and hard-line Starbucks customers who say they want a lot of changes.
Baristas complain about what they say is chronic understaffing, poor wages and benefits, and their inability to easily ban aggressive customers from Starbucks stores. Passionate customers want consistently good coffee.
On Tuesday, after Starbucks reported a 6% decline in fourth-quarter same-store sales in the U.S. and withdrew its earnings guidance for the next fiscal year, Nicol said baristas need support to provide “exceptional service” to customers.
“To succeed, we need to address staffing in our stores, remove bottlenecks, and simplify things for our baristas,” he said in a video statement.
Liv Ryan, a barista and union organizer at Starbucks on Long Island, New York, said Nicol should put “an end to understaffing.”
She said baristas have long had complaints about Starbucks’ lack of guidance on how to deal with customers in a bad mood.
“I’ve been told countless times that part of our job is just taking in rude customers,” Ryan said. “But there is no clear line between ‘rude’ and ‘hostility,’ and even then I should not tolerate anyone being rude to me at my job.”
Many other baristas who are part of, or who aim to be part of the new Starbucks United Workers union, want to see Starbucks complete the contract negotiation process with workers. “All I’m looking for is a collective bargaining agreement by the end of the year,” said Parker Davis, a union organizer at Starbucks in San Antonio.
Nicol said in the video that he will share more details about the potential changes in the company’s earnings call on Oct. 30, after Starbucks releases its earnings for the fourth quarter and the year as a whole.
“We suspect there may be multiple avenues of attack (by Nicole), including increasing store hours and reducing the frequency of limited-time promotions,” said Sharon Zakvia, an analyst at William Blair.
As for the coffee itself, it’s roasted, according to an enthusiastic Starbucks customer whose legal name is Winter.
Winter, who has visited more than 19,000 Starbucks locations around the world in an effort to visit every company-owned location, said he still enjoys the atmosphere at Starbucks — at least when it’s not the morning rush — but these days, he finds the coffee wanting.
He says he used to love it in 1997, but Starbucks has since made its menu much more sophisticated with specialty coffee orders. “And getting a fancy drink isn’t going to make me enjoy it anymore.”
(Reporting by Waylon Cunningham; Editing by Sonali Paul)