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Its rare for a company to give up more than a decade of brand recognizability for a new name. Its even rarer for said company to trade their name for the name of a younger, less well-known company. But thats exactly what Grammarly, the writing and grammar assistant tool with 40 million daily active users, is doing. Starting today, Grammarly is rolling out a massive, all-encompassing rebrand to become Superhuman. Naming a company is like naming a kid, says Grammarly CEO Shishir Mehrotra. Renaming your 16-year-old is, like, 10 times harder. Swapping the name of your 16-year-old and your 11-year-old is 100 times harder. Thats probably what we’re doing. Grammarly’s new name is pulled directly from the AI-powered email platform Superhuman, which Grammarly acquired back in January. The swap is intended to signal a new beginning as the brand repositions itself from a writing helper to an all-in-one work productivity tool. Despite the fact that, by Mehrotra’s own admission, Grammarly currently has a “higher brand awareness” than Superhuman, he believes this change is necessary to help consumers buy in on the company’s potential. The trouble with the name ‘Grammarly’ is, like many names, its strength is its biggest weakness: it’s so precise, Mehrotra says. People’s expectations of what Grammarly can do for them are the reason its so popular. You need very little pitch for what it does, because the name explains the whole thing . . . As we went and looked at all the other things we wanted to be able to do for you, people scratch their heads a bit [saying], Wait, I don’t really perceive Grammarly that way. [Image: Superhuman] So . . . what the heck is Superhuman? Grammarlys transformation into Superhuman is so extensive, even the team behind it has some trouble describing exactly what Superhuman is. To start, here are the basics: Grammarly’s new overarching brand is called Superhuman, but the product at its core is called Superhuman Go. The email app that was once just Superhuman is now Superhuman Mail. From a naming standpoint, it’s definitely confusing. And on the product side, it’s not much easier to grasp what Superhuman actually does. When I asked Collin Whitehead, Grammarlys head of product and design, to describe Superhuman Go in as few words as possible, he took a full 10 seconds to gather his thoughts. Essentially, what we’re trying to do is build an agentic platform where users can get the power of AI everywhere that they already work, he says. [Image: Superhuman] For context, Grammarly has been an AI-powered company since its inception in 2009, building a writing and grammar tool that used natural language processing to offer edits to users. Over the past few years, its been introducing generative tools that not only improve users own words, but help them draft new original text, as well as offering more subjective writing suggestions for better clarity and impact. More recently, Grammarly has embarked on a spending spree to acquire additional AI companies that expand its scope. In December 2024, Grammarly acquired Coda, an AI-powered work platform thats like a combination of Google Docs, Airtable, and Notion. (Mehrotra actually founded Coda, and became CEO of Grammarly post acquisition). Then, in June 2025, Grammarly also acquired Superhuman. The terms of both deals were undisclosed, but Coda and Superhuman were last valued at $1.4 billion and $835 million, respectively, in 2021. Now, Grammarly is using those new investments to turn Superhuman into a much more all-encompassing work tool. [Image: Superhuman] Mehrotra explains it like this: Grammarly has always run on the AI superhighway, meaning that, instead of living on its own platform, Grammarly travels with you to places like Google Docs, email, or your Notes app to help improve your writing. Superhuman will use that superhighway to bring a huge new range of productivity tools to wherever you’re working. We bring AI right to where people work, Mehrotra says. The analogy is, we only run one car on that highway, and that’s the one with your high school grammar teacher in it. But the idea is, what if it could be all the different agents and assisants that you would like? [Image: Superhuman] Updating Grammarly to Superhuman Starting today, Grammarly users can turn on Superhuman Go by clicking on the Grammarly icon in their browser and toggling the product on. From there, theyll get a step-by-step onboarding to Superhuman Go. Users can look through a library of dozens of productivity agents and choose which theyd like to use. Options include a Gmail agent, which can draft and send new messages from any other workspace and summarize insights from emails; a calendar agent that can help schedule meetings from anywhere; and a Reader Reaction agent that can break down the most likely reader responses to whatever you might be working on. Several writing-based agents with the former Grammarly branding will also be available. With so many moving parts, Whitehead says, Superhuman needed a new identity that was versatile enough to introduce users to its capabilities. That started with picking a name. [Image: Superhuman] That is definitely something that we heavily debated, Whitehead says. I was leading that naming process, and we were coming up with names that have never existed before; names that were fully abstract and totally made up, but had a nice mouth feel. The name, he adds, had to be powerful, unique to the user, and human-centricsomething that would make the user feel better for having used it. As the abstract naming process continued, nothing was clicking. Elevating the user was such a key part of the brief that, when we got notice about the potential [Superhuman] acquisition, it was like an earwormwe couldn’t unsee the connection between that Superhuman name and what we were going for, Whitehead says. Even before acquisition talks were closed, Superhuman kept reemerging as the best brand name for the company. Eventually, Whitehead says, it became the obvious choice. [Image: Superhuman] The two kinds of AI companies The design agency tasked with bringing Superhuman to life was Smith & Diction, the same team behind the branding for Perplexity AI. Grammarly began briefing the Smith & Diction team on the rebrand in early 2025, but the company didnt officially select its new name until late June, when the Superhuman acquisition was completed. For Chara and Mike Smith, the couple behind Smith & Diction, that meant there were only about three months to fully realize Superhumans branding. In Charas experience, there are two kinds of AI companies. The first leans into the idea of automating tasks. Companies in this category have become recognizable for amorphous, abstract branding, like Open AIs intertwined circles, Google Geminis ombre sparkle, or even Perplexitys own swirling pages (which, Mike says, has given Smith & Diction a reputation for designing the butthole logo). The second category of AI companies is centered instead on how the user is in control of the tool, rather than the other way around. [Image: Superhuman] From the beginning, we definitely wanted to sit in that second camp, Chara says. Like, you’re the one with the ideas, you’re the one steering the ship. Its almost like the Iron Man super suit. You put that on, and Iron Man is still in there, guiding it, making the decisions. But Iron Man can do so much more because of this super suit. Its obvious that, with its new productivity platform, Grammarly wants to bill itself as an unobtrusive, human-centric tool. Mehrotra says Superhuman should feel super subtle and invisible. In essence, its an AI helper thats not out to steal your job, but to help you get better at it. To sell that concept (even to potential AI naysayers), the company needed an extremely friendly, unintimidating brand. To that end, Superhumans branding all hinges around one cute icon-slash-mascot named Hero. Hero serves a number of functions for Superhuman, including acting as the brands logo and guiding users through the UI experience. Its primary goal, though, is to make Superhuman feel trustworthy. [Image: Superhuman] Transforming the Grammarly logo into a Superhuman Heros look is essentially Grammarlys iconic cursor (which looks a bit like a triangle with a chunk missing), topped with a round head. The simple-yet-versatile character can represent an A or an i (for AI, naturally), a cursor, and a superhero. Where it really comes alive, though, is through animation. We imagined it kind of taking the place of an explainer video, Mke explains. [Image: Superhuman] When Hero is thinking of an answer, its head bobs; when its writing, it turns into ellipses; and when it needs to get your attention, it springs upside down. All of these details might seem small, but Mike says they serve the dual purpose of helping users to understand how to use Superhuman and making the product feel more like an actual assistant. If your logo is the thing that helps you through the product, then you’re going to build brand equity super quickly, he adds. To compliment Heros personality, Chara and Mike swapped Grammarlys signature green for a warm palette of purples and maroonsa choice that stands out in a tech branding space saturated with blue and black. The result is a brand that feels both authoritative and warm. This was a product-first rebrand, Whitehead says. It was not about how this shows up on a billboard. This was, How can the user connect with this brand on a more meaningful level? The mark itself is intrinsic to the user experience. [Image: Superhuman] Naming a company is like naming a kid Logos doubling as mascots are nothing new in the branding space. But, with the exception of the Chinese company DeepSeek, Superhuman is one of the first AI companies to weave this kind of living mark into the user experience. In a moment when fears around the potential misuse of AI tend to dominate the cultural zeitgeist, the approach makes a lot of sense. Still, for a company with as much brand equity as Grammarly, its an inherently risky move. Theres always the possibility that moving toward an AI-centric brand narrative invites backlash, considering that companies including Duolingo and Klarna both came under fire this year for touting their AI-first approaches. However, the greater possibility is brand confusion, and even the cost of brand equity. Mehrotra says he’s well aware that some customers simply won’t adopt the name “Superhuman” when they refer to the company formerly known as Grammarly. While the Grammarly brand will still exist as an agent within the Superhuman platform, the company is certainly making a calculated trade-off by swapping the brand. If you think about gaming platforms, there’s many cases where the scale of the game outshines the name of the platform. And that’s totally fine, Mehrota says. I think for many people, they’re gonna seek out and install what they perceive to be Grammarly and happen to get Superhuman Go along the way, just like when you know when you want to play Call of Duty and you end up with a gaming console.
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E-Commerce
The Federal Reserve is expected to cut its short-term rate Wednesday for the second time this year despite an increasingly cloudy view of the economy it is trying to influence.The government shutdown has cut off the flow of data that the Fed relies on to track employment, inflation, and the broader economy. September’s jobs report, scheduled for release three weeks ago, is still postponed. This month’s hiring figures, to be released Nov. 7, will likely be delayed and may be less comprehensive when they are finally released. And the White House said last week that October’s inflation report may never be issued at all.The data drought raises risks for the Fed because it is widely expected to keep cutting rates in an effort to shore up growth and hiring. Fed officials signaled at their last meeting in September that they would likely implement rate reductions in October and December, and financial markets now consider a cut in December to be a near-certainty.Yet should job gains pick up soon, the Fed may not detect the change. And if hiring rebounds after weak job gains during the summer, further rate cuts may not be justified.On Tuesday, payroll processor ADP released a new weekly measure of hiring by businesses, using payroll data from millions of clients. It shows that in late September and earlier this month, companies resumed adding jobs, after shedding workers in July and August.Still, a key reason rate cuts are so widely expected is that most Fed officials see its key rate, which is now about 4.1%, to be high enough that it is restraining the economy’s growth. Under this view, the Fed can cut several more times before reaching a level that might provide unnecessary stimulus to the economy.Before the government shutdown cut off the flow of data Oct. 1, monthly hiring gains had weakened to an average of just 29,000 a month for the previous three months, according to the Labor Department’s data. The unemployment rate ticked up to a still-low 4.3% in August from 4.2% in July.Meanwhile, last week’s inflation report released more than a week late because of the shutdown showed that inflation remains elevated but isn’t accelerating and may not need higher interest rates to tame it.The government’s first report on the economy’s growth in the July-September quarter was scheduled to be published on Thursday, but will be delayed, as will Friday’s report on consumer spending that also includes the Fed’s preferred inflation measure.Fed officials say they are monitoring a range of other data, including some issued by the private sector, and don’t feel handicapped by the lack of government reports.Also on Wednesday, the central bank may announce that it will no longer reduce the size of its massive securities holdings, which it accumulated during and after the pandemic and after the 2008-2009 Great Recession. The change could over time slightly reduce longer-term interest rates on things like mortgages but aren’t likely to have a major impact on consumer borrowing costs.The Fed purchased nearly $5 trillion of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds from 2020 to 2022 to stabilize financial markets during the pandemic and keep longer-term interest rates low. The bond-buying lifted its securities holdings to $9 trillion.When the central bank buys a Treasury note, for example, it pays for it with newly-created money that is deposited into reserve accounts banks hold at the Fed.In the past three years, however, the Fed has reduced its holdings to about $6.6 trillion. To shrink its holdings, the Fed lets securities mature without replacing them, reducing bank reserves. The risk is if it reduces its holdings too far, short-term interest rates could spike as banks borrow money to top-up their reserves.In 2019, the Fed was reducing its balance sheet and caused a sharp, unexpected spike in short-term rates that disrupted financial markets, an outcome they want to avoid this time.The Fed currently is reducing its holdings of mortgage-backed securities by up to $35 billion a month and Treasuries by just $5 billion a month. Powell said two weeks ago that the Fed would consider ending the rolloff “in coming months,” but analysts now expect it to happen sooner because of recent signs that banks are running low on reserves. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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E-Commerce
Today, Nvidia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) became the first company to cross the $5 trillion valuationin premarket trading, at least. It marks a major milestone in stock market history and suggests that once other unthinkable valuations are within reach. But Nvidia isnt the only company breaking a trillion-dollar threshold. Fellow tech giants like Apple, Meta, and Broadcom are close to bursting their own thirteen-figure barriers, too. Heres what you need to know about Nvidias approach to $5 trillion as companies climb toward the most exclusive club on the planet. Nvidia hits $5 trillion market cap in premarket trading As of this writing, Nvidia has become the first company to cross the $5 trillion valuation threshold. In premarket trading, NVDA shares are currently up 3.65% to $208.37 per share. With about 24.3 billion shares outstanding, that gives Nvidia a current premarket valuation of just over $5 trillion. If Nvidias stock price levels hold once the opening bell rings, it will cement its place in the record books. The companys current premarket jump follows the stocks nearly 5% rise yesterday. These gains have been primarily driven by recent announcements from the company that are lifting investors’ expectations. As CNBC notes, Nvidia announced plans yesterday to build seven new supercomputers for the U.S. government, including at Los Alamos National Laboratories. Separately, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed that the companys all-important Blackwell GPUs are now in full production in the U.S. state of Arizona. This allows Nvidia to manufacture more of its AI chips, which can help meet the incessant demand for its processors. But theres another factor that may be motivating Nvidia investors. As Reuters reports, President Trump is in Asia this week, meeting with regional leaders. He is due to meet with Xi Jinping, Chinas President, tomorrow. Today, Trump revealed that he will speak to the Chinese president about Nvidias Blackwell chips, which are currently banned in the country. A lifting of this ban could greatly boost Nvidias bottom line if the company can once again sell its Chips inside China. Investors seem to feel that this trio of positive news has the chance to materially benefit the company, hence, the $5 trillion barrier falling. Other companies are close to breaking trillion-dollar milestones Nvidias $5 trillion milestone isn’t the only thirteen-figure barrier that is being broken this week. Yesterday, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) officially crossed the $4 trillion barrier for the first time, before closing the day with a market valuation of $3.99 trillion. Apples accession into the $4 trillion club made it just the third company in history to cross that barrier, after Nvidia and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT). While nothing is certain, its possible Apple could cross back over the $4 trillion threshold again today. And Apple and Nvidia arent the only companies within reach of crossing trillion-dollar thresholds. Two other companies are within range, too. Facebook owner Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) had a market cap of $1.88 trillion as of yesterdays close. That means it’s less than $120 billion from crossing the $2 trillion barrier, which would be a first for the company. Semiconductor and internet infrastructure company Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO) is also relatively close to crossing a trillion-dollar barrier. As of yesterdays market close, Broadcom had a market cap of $1.76 trillion. That puts it at less than $250 billion from the $2 trillion club. Of course, while these companies are closest to their next trillion-dollar barriers, theres no guarantee that their stocks will continue to go higher, or, if they do, how long it will take. But their ascent up the ranks is another example of how once unthinkable trillion-dollar market caps are becoming more common. A full list of the worlds trillion-dollar public companies For those keeping track, there are now 11 trillion-dollar publicly traded companies, based on yesterdays share prices at market close, according to data compiled by CompaniesMarketCap.com. Those companies are: Nvidia ($4.89T) Microsoft ($4.02T) Apple ($3.99T) Alphabet ($3.23T) Amazon ($2.44T) Meta ($1.88T) Broadcom ($1.76T) Saudi Aramco ($1.66T) TSMC ($1.56T) Tesla ($1.53T) Berkshire Hathaway ($1.03T) Big Tech earnings could impact the trajectory It will be interesting to see how the current tech earnings season will impact the market caps of many of these companies. Investors will particularly be interested in how the artificial intelligence boom is affecting the bottom lines of companies like Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, all three of which are expected to report their financial results after the closing bell today (Wednesday, October 29). Wall Street will also be watching for any updates from these companies about their capital expenditure plans, as the AI boom has required huge investments from the world’s largest tech giants. If investors are satisfied that AI investments are worth the costsand if they don’t see signs of a slowdownshare prices could spike, sending them further up the ranks into the trillion-dollar club. But if investors begin to worry that we are, as many have speculated, in an AI-fueled bubble, many of the companies in the trillion-dollar club could see their rankings slip fast as their share prices fall.
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E-Commerce
Imagine a Yelp-style user-review site that lets users generate and post AI video reviews of local businesses. Say one of these videos presents a business in a bad light, and the business owner sues for defamation. Can the business sue the reviewer and the review site that hosted the video? In the near-to-immediate future, company websites will be infused with AI tools. A home decor brand might use a bot to handle customer service messages. A health provider might use AI to summarize notes from a patient exam. A fintech app might use personalized AI-generated video to onboard new customers. But what happens when someone claims they’ve been defamed or otherwise harmed by some AI-generated content? Or, say, claims harm after a piece of their own AI-generated content is taken down? The fact is, websites hosting AI-generated content may face more legal jeopardy than ones that host human-created content. That’s because existing defamation laws don’t apply neatly to claims arising from generated content, and how future court cases settle this could limit or expand the kinds of AI content a website operator can safely generate and display. And while the legal landscape is in flux, knowing how the battle is being fought in courtrooms can help companies plan ahead for a world in which AI content is everywhereand its veracity unclear. In 1996, at the dawn of the internet, forward-thinking lawmakersOregon Senator Ron Wyden and then-California Representative Chris Coxfeared that libel lawsuits and aggressive regulation by Washington, D.C., could overwhelm budding internet companies, which could operate forums, social networks, or search engines, stifling growth and slowing investment. Wyden and Cox proposed Section 230, a statute in the Communications Decency Act of 1996 ensuring that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. In other words, if a website had a hand in creating the content, its legal immunity would vanish. Since then, Section 230 has proved surprisingly durable, surviving relatively unscathed through the internet boom, the social media craze, and the mobile revolution. At the same time, it has become something of a political lightning rod in recent years as policymakers have explored ways of regulating social media. But the next revolution in techgenerative AImay not enjoy any of Section 230s protections. Our current AI models do something like co-create content alongside the user, who prompts the model to generate what they want. Based on that, tools like ChatGPT and Sora would seem to be excluded from Section 230 legal immunity. Alas, it may not be that simple. The duality of Sora Generative AI companies have been sued several times for libelous output, but none have lost, and none have yet resorted to Section 230 in their defense. In one of the more widely known cases, syndicated radio host Mark Walters sued OpenAI for defamation after ChatGPT falsely claimed that Walters had been accused of embezzling funds from a gun rights group. OpenAI won the case without having to claim Section 230 protection. The chatbot had generated the false information after warning that the accusation had occurred after its training data cutoff date. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on whether the company has used Section 230 as part of a legal defense. It gets even trickier with OpenAIs new Sora app, which lets users generate AI videos and then share them on its TikTok-style social feed. (The Meta AI app does essentially the same.) Using the language of Section 230, Sora is both an information content provider (a speaker or creator) and a provider of an interactive computer service (a host). Sora, and hybrid apps like it, may raise the stakes on the question of when Section 230 should be applied. Chatbots can defame with words, but Sora quickly generates alarmingly realistic video, which can convey a message more believably by showing, rather than telling. Combine that with Soras seamless distribution of the video and, in the wrong hands, you have an all-in-one tool for defamation. A borderline case At some point, AI companies are likely to reach for Section 230, possibly as a last resort, if sued, according to some legal experts, including Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA and a leading thinker on AI and libel. Thorny questions about how the provision applies to their technology (whether they can use its protections to mount a defense) may well arise. And despite the fact that the language of 230 would seem to preclude it, its conceivable that a court could, in certain circumstances, accept it as a valid defense. Suppose a Sora user generates a video showing a public official taking a bribe, triggering a libel suit. This, Volokh argues, would amount to something of a borderline case: Sora creates the video itself (meaning the content is provided by itself). On the other hand, Volokh says, it’s generating the video based on a query or based on a prompt submitted by a user. So you might say the defamatory elements of that stem from what the user is contributing, not Sora. OpenAIs lawyers would likely point out that the platform itself doesnt decide on the content of the videos it produces, only that its implementing its users wishes, Volokh says. That is to say, without specific prompts from the user, the AI would never have acted to create the offending video in the first place. Yet a court may still hew to the letter of Section 230, which states that if at least part of the creation of the video happened during its generation, it isnt covered. The fact that OpenAIs Sora provides both a mechanism for creating and distributing a video may weaken its case for 230 protection. Libel law, Volokh says, would require a generated video to be published in order to be considered defamatory information. In theory, a court could argue that OpenAI should reasonably foresee that a video created on its platform would, then, be distributed, Volokh says. And therefore it is basically aiding and abetting this defamation through its own actions of generating the video, he adds. The shield and the sword Yet theres a case to be made that generative AI platforms do deserve the legal protections afforded by Section 230, even if they help both create and distribute the content, says Jess Miers, a law rofessor at the University of Akron. Like social media companies, these services face constant challenges from users who generate problematic content, and they need incentives to both allow expressive activity and build guardrails against harmful or infringing outputs. Indeed, that was the original intent of Section 230, as Wyden told me in 2018. Section 230 provides both a shield and a sword to internet companies. The shield protects them from liability for harmful content posted on their platforms by users. The sword is the laws good samaritan clause, which provides legal cover for actively removing harmful content from their platform. Before Section 230, tech companies were hesitant to moderate content for fear of being branded publishers and, thus, liable for toxic user content. With generative apps like Sora, OpenAIs developers effectively co-create content with the user, Miers says. The developers choose the training data, train the models, and do the fine-tuning that shapes the output. The user contributes the prompts. Congress may need to craft a new kind of protection that captures this co-creative dynamic to preserve expression, safety, and competition in this evolving new market, Miers says. Congress might try to rewrite Section 230 (or construct a new law) that distinguishes between defamatory intent on the users part versus the AIs. This would involve digging into the details of how AI models work. Lawmakers might start by studying how users could misuse models to create harmful content, such as bypassing safety guardrails or eliminating made by AI labels. If thats a recurring problem, then a 230-style framework shielding AI companies from liability for users misuse could make sense, Miers says. As many Sora app users have noticed, OpenAI is playing it very safe with the kinds of videos it allows. Its already taken down many, many videos, and has agreed to restrict the use of images of public or historical figures (such as Martin Luther King Jr.) upon request. This suggests that while a Section 230 might protect AI companies from libel suits in some circumstances, OpenAI isnt eager to test the theory.
Category:
E-Commerce
It’s 2 p.m. on a Monday, and the Starbucks on 23rd Street and Park Avenue in New York Citys Flatiron neighborhood is packed. Not that it would take much. The small shoproughly 265 square feet of front-of-house spaceis big enough for a short line to form before it would bust through the door and out onto the sidewalk. This location is the company’s very first “espresso bar” format storea new, small-store design that will serve as the cornerstone of Starbucks’s future expansion plans. [Photo: Starbucks] It’s also a symbol of a Starbucks in flux. Until recently, the store was for mobile orders and pickup-only; then in September, it reopened after a speedy uplift (Starbucks speak for a small-scale renovation) in a new espresso bar format complete with seats. Starbucks leadership hopes the design will help propel the coffee chain into a cozier, more profitable era. When I visited, the store was indeed cozier than the average New York City Starbucks, which can often feel industrial and cave-like. A cushy green leather banquette spanned one wall with enough room to fit three laptop-sized round tables. Two seating nooks with built-in desks and stools looked out onto the street. [Photo: Starbucks] All told, about 10 butts could sit down comfortably in the space. But thats 10 more butts than beforeand butts in seats is the reason Starbucks renovated the space in the first place. The espresso bar format is part of CEO Brian Niccols Back to Starbucks plan, which reimagines Starbucks as a coffee shop you might actually want to spend time in. In the grand scheme of things, Niccol would still like to more than double Starbucks’s global footprint, and expand the brand to more than 100,000 locations worldwide. And he’s said the small, espresso bar format would be key in this growth. But in the more immediate future, Niccol’s turnaround strategy requires updating aging locations into something more comfortable. Starbucks expects to uplift 1,000 stores over the next year, often transforming the stores bit by bit at night and during off hours to avoid losing operation hours. Each uplift will cost around $150,000a small investment for a company that had an annual revenue of $36 billion in fiscal year 2024. [Photo: Starbucks] Out with pick up, in with sit down The espresso bar format, specifically, is an area of opportunity for the company. Over the summer, Starbucks announced that it would close or renovate many of its mobile order-only locations, which totaled more than 80 locations. It was a notable pivot away from Starbucks as a streamlined caffeine factory, towards something more akin to a traditional coffeehouse. Starbucks began experimenting with pick up-only shops as early as 2015, just as mobile ordering began reshaping the landscape of American quick service restaurants. Customers quickly adapted to the convenience of tapping a button on their phone to order their daily drink. Today, mobile ordering accounts for 31% of Starbucks orders. But for all its revenue-generating success, the pick-up only format wasn’t without its issues. Instead of alleviating wait times and bottlenecks, it increased them in some instances, largely due to a menu that ballooned in size and a lack of operational sophistication that couldn’t keep pace with customers’ expectations of speedier service. More troubling was the effect it had on people’s perception of Starbucks as a brand. When Niccol arrived at Starbucks, he zeroed in on pick-up only stores as an obvious problem to solve. We found this format to be overly transactional and lacking the warmth and human connection that defines our brand, Niccol said on an earnings call in July 2025. Now, dozens of these spaces are being reimagined as coffee bars where the emphasis is on fast service, sure, but with a bigger shot of hospitality. What this looks like in practice will vary from location to location since all of the small-format stores have unique quirks that designers will need to work with during renovations. [Photo: Starbucks] Materiality matters The Park Ave location is filled with little details meant to give the space a softer, more upscale appearance. Theres a new tile-clad, wood-trimmed ordering counter that sits lower than average to encourage more connection with the barista. Minimalist pendant lighting hangs above, to give the space a warm glow at night. Wood-encased speakers hang in the corners of the room, and a vintage-looking credenza sits against a wall filled with bags of coffee beans that customers can grab. [Photo: Starbucks] I appreciated the materiality of the spacethe leather and wood, the live plants in the corner, the soft curve of the green wall panels. The Starbucks team is clearly trying to up its game after years of creating spaces that, in my experience, do little to invite you in. Starbucks says it’s measuring the success of these spaces in terms of how long customers stay, how often they return, and (of course) sales. It’s too soon to say if these revamps will be enough to lure in the kind of customers they’re afterthe kind who see Starbucks as a home away from home. For what it’s worth, I didnt see anyone drinking out of a ceramic mug (a feature Niccol brought back in his quest for coziness). In fact, the only person I saw lingering for any length of time was a college-age student with a laptop who was nursing her to-go cup of coffee. But that, just maybe, is exactly the signs of life Starbucks is hoping to see more of.
Category:
E-Commerce