After being on the job for less than two months, Starbucks’ new CEO, Brian Niccol, is making some big changes to turn things around for the coffee company. One of the first things he’s done is mostly remove the discount offers Starbucks was using to lure customers back to the stores. Another action has been to reduce the menu to make it simpler and remove the extra charge for non-dairy milk. The self-serve area for customers to add cream and sugar is being returned after it was eliminated during the years of the pandemic.
To bring back a “human touch,” baristas will write the customers’ names on their coffee cups. This change is a recent decision by the company CEO. According to Starbucks, the original practice was started in 2012 and the idea was to “honor everyone who walked through the door as an individual.”
It was during the pandemic that Starbucks mostly stopped the practice. Instead of writing the customer’s name on the cup a sticky label was attached with the customer’s name and order.
Bringing Back the Starbucks Experience
“Getting back to Starbucks” is Niccol’s top priority. This signals a return to the practices that customers originally loved about Starbucks and helped position the company as a premium brand with customer loyalty. Niccol understands that it’s “not just about the coffee, but about the experience.”
On a recent Starbucks earnings call, Niccol said, “One of the other things we’re gonna be bringing back is bringing the Sharpies back to our baristas, and it’s going to give them the opportunity to put that additional human touch on every coffee experience as well. So there’s a lot of—I think there’s a lot of just simple things that go a long way of saying, you know what, this is a community place, this is a special place where people are here to connect. And I think we can do that in a really meaningful way.”
In an interview on CNBC, Niccol said Starbucks will need “something like close to 200,000 Sharpies we’ve got to track down.”
That is an impressive amount of markers.
The argument could be made that buying 200,000 Sharpies so that baristas can take the time to write customers’ names on their cups may add unnecessary complexity to an order. It is also an additional cost to a company struggling with lethargic sales. Even if the cost of 200,000 Sharpies does not have a big impact on a company like Starbucks, it’s still adding to the time it takes to process a customer’s order.
Prioritizing Connection in a Fast-Paced World
The new CEO believes that the cost and time investment is worth it. Niccol’s goal is to re-establish Starbucks as a premium brand, something that he has stated multiple times. Niccol understands that Starbucks is just not about coffee. A premium brand is about more than the actual product a company sells—it’s about the whole experience for the customer.
The idea of baristas and customers being on a first-name basis is the whole reason that Starbucks is returning to writing names on cups. The use of Sharpies helps make a customer feel known and enhances their experience.
The idea is not without pitfalls, which can be found easily online under “Starbucks name fails.” Additionally, it can be difficult to create meaningful connections between workers and customers while maintaining efficiency. Printing labels with order information is arguably faster and more precise, and handwriting customer names takes extra time and is prone to mistakes, but it may feel more personal.
Cultivating an enjoyable customer experience requires intentional, thoughtful insight. From the CEO to the barista taking an order, everyone in Starbucks must be committed and expend great effort to provide that experience to millions of customers a day with a Sharpie in hand.
