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Starbucks held its quarterly earnings call Tuesday, during which CEO Brian Niccol highlighted a slew of design steps the company is taking as part of its overall turnaround strategy. While Niccols described the company’s drop in quarterly earnings as “disappointing,” behind the scenes he claims the coffee chain is still making progress toward its back-to-basics comeback plan by upgrading its coffeehouses, standardizing the Starbucks experience store-to-store, and implementing more efficient systems. All of this will begin to roll out over the next few months. Here’s a rundown of the design changes so far and what’s heating up for next quarter. [Photo: Starbucks] 1. Coffeeshop uplifts coming to select cities in months Starbucks has been planning to make its cafés more cozy for a while now, as part of an effort to keep customers coming back and spending more time in-store. On its Tuesday earnings call, Niccol said store redesigns are moving along and that he expects they will deliver an exceptional customer experience. Coffeehouse uplifts, as Niccols described them during the company’s earnings call, will begin to roll out in New York City and Southern California in the coming months. The chain designed the updates to its cafés to make them feel more premium, warm, and inviting while also keeping costs down and minimizing store closures. Already, a return to what Niccol described as great seats in some locations has contributed to more customers sitting and staying a while longer. “The third place is our heritage,” he said. “It’s needed more than ever, and we’re reclaiming it.” 2. An optimized shift app for employees Last quarter, the company made an update to Shift Marketplace, its tool that allows employees to trade and pick up shifts locally. This increased the pool of employees able to fill in last-minute shift changes by a factor of 10, so that fewer cafés are understaffed, according to the company. The ultimate goal of the change is to improve employee experience as well as the customer’s in-store experience, by beefing up staffing and decreasing wait times. [Photo: Starbucks] 3. The green apron premium experience at scale Niccol said the company had piloted a “new green apron service model” for employees and stores that creates more flexibility; better captures demand, especially at peak hours; and delivers “a more premium customer experience.” The model includes updated expectations and new streamlined routines, and a new algorithm for sequencing when to make preordered drinks, especially important during peak times. The new model will be expanded to more than 2,000 U.S. company-operated locations beginning in May, and reach more than two-thirds of its cafés by the end of the fiscal year. 4. Paired with premium drinks and a redesigned menu Starbucks has simplified its menu, and it’s also focusing on premium drinks. It plans to fully roll out its proprietary single-cup Clover Vertica brewer, which has now been installed in 70% of stores. Niccol said Starbucks is also working on artisanal snacks and freshly baked and prepared food it can bring to stores. The more upscale menu goes hand in hand with the elevated store design, aimed at getting customers to come in, spend more, and stay longer. Niccol said Starbucks is also finding ways to improve on existing products, like matcha, which saw sales improve 40% year over year after the company removed sugar in response to customer feedback. When it comes to seasonal drinks, the company will take “an agile test-and-learn approach” to create drinks that are not only relevant but “executed consistently.” 5. A new, more efficient ordering algorithm Starbucks piloted a new algorithm at select stores that does a better job of sequencing the production of drink orders, whether placed at the café counter, drive-through, or by app. According to the company’s tests, it has dropped café wait times by an average of two minutes. Being able to shave minutes off wait times is especially helpful during peak hours, and it gives employees a more streamlined work experience. “We’re finding through our work that investments in labor, rather than equipment, are more effective at improving throughput and driving transaction growth,” Niccol said. “We’re shifting our focus from beverage production to craft and connection.” [Photo: Starbucks] All part of its “Back to Starbucks” approach Starbucks announced an updated dress code for employees earlier this month to make the customer and employee experience consistent across cafés and to ensure the brand’s recognizable green apron was the star of the fit. The dress code is an outward sign of a larger shift at the company. Starbucks’s other ongoing design changes, like bringing back handwritten notes on coffee cups, ceramic mugs for to-stay orders, and free same-visit refills of hot or iced coffee or tea, have been received positively by customers, Niccol said. Starbucks says it’s getting back to basics, and the coffee chain hopes that a renovated store and improved customer experience will not only deliver on that, but also improve the company’s bottom line.
Category:
E-Commerce
Are you ready to hand over your wallet to AI and let it do your shopping for you? Maybe notbut the technology to do it is hitting the market. On Wednesday, Visa announced Visa Intelligent Commerce, which effectively allows AI agents to find and buy goods or services on behalf of consumers. While Visa itself doesnt create the AI agents, what its done is create the e-commerce backbone to allow it to happen. Consumers could use AI tools to track down potential purchases, but then those platforms would hand control back over to the human to complete the transaction. The big change with Visas technology is that, with the proper permissions enabled, AI agents can complete the purchase without going back to their human handler. The value-add, Visas Chief Product and Strategy Officer Jack Forestell tells Fast Company, is that it frees up the cognitive load and time, delivering massively better outcomes, and more valueits going to deliver better shopping experiences. For example, a shopper can now request that an AI agent buy a bouquet for their mom as a Mothers Day gift, and the entire process requires little, if any additional input from the shopper. The AI may be able to find the particular flowers the consumers mother likes, at a desired price point, and have them delivered on or before Mothers Day. The shopper can breathe easy, and not put too much thought or effort into the transactionsomething that their mothers probably wouldnt want to know. As for the tech itself, Forestell says that getting AI agents set up to make payments involves getting a payment card credential to an agent, which he says is tech thats similar to Apple Pay or Google Paythe agent gets a token that can only be used by that agent. From there, and from Visas standpoint, two things need to occur: Visa needs to get a buy signal from a merchant that indicates an agent is making a purchase, and the confirmation that the transaction has completed. While there will be some lag between users adopting agentic payments en masse, as merchants, consumers, and financial institutions learn to trust them and use them efficiently. But Forestell says APIs will be available on Wednesday, so people and companies can begin to work with the technology.
Category:
E-Commerce
Pretend you and 99 peers had to duke it out against a gorilla. Would your squad emerge victorious? That debate has been dividing the internet over the past few days. The conversation originally surfaced on Reddit back in 2020, when a user posed the question in the r/whowouldwin subreddit. It recently reignited after the question was put to X users last week. The viral postnow with over 288 million viewssuggests that 100 men could defeat a single gorilla if everyone was dedicated to the task. Since then, arguments have raged across social media. MrBeast even joined the discussion: Need 100 men to test this, any volunteers? he wrote, alongside a fake thumbnail for a YouTube video based on the concept. Need 100 men to test this, any volunteers? pic.twitter.com/p2iQvOWbYJ— MrBeast (@MrBeast) April 28, 2025 Meanwhile, Elon Musk responded: Sure, whats the worst that could happen? Naturally, the internet had questions before picking a side. Are weapons allowed? What tactics are in play? Are we talking average guysor 100 Dwayne The Rock Johnsons? To help settle the debate, some turned to AI and gaming simulators. One viral post on X showed the gorilla dispatching 100 humans with apparent ease. someone simulated 100 men vs 1 gorilla pic.twitter.com/9F2hTldLDt— juju (@ayeejuju) April 28, 2025 Another user vibe coded a custom battle in Hytopia, a free-to-play gaming world. The gorilla won, they added. In yet another simulation, X users took issue with the unrealistic height advantage given to the gorilla (because, of course, accuracy matters here). The craziest thing about this trend is that it revealed how many people think gorillas are 15 feet tall, one person commented. someone made a simulator of the 1 gorilla vs 100 men pic.twitter.com/ZnIt7VXuCv— kira (@kirawontmiss) April 28, 2025 A primatologist brought in by Rolling Stone quickly shut the whole thing down, calling the premise entirely unrealistic. While adult male gorillas can weigh over 400 pounds and are estimated to be four to 10 times stronger than humans, they are in fact gentle giants who would avoid this conflict whenever possible, they explained. Still, as one X user put it: This gorilla conversation is real interweb discussions. Not all that other tomfoolery nonsense. And really, isnt it nice to see the internet putting its debating skills to positive use?
Category:
E-Commerce
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