(Bloomberg) — Customers who pull up to Starbucks Corp.’s drive-through locations should soon get their orders within four minutes. At least, that’s the goal.
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The new wait time target is being rolled out at more than 11,000 company-owned stores in North America, according to recent training documents viewed by Bloomberg News. The plan also includes goals for mobile orders.
It’s part of a push to lure in customers by improving service, and echoes a four-minute target for in-store orders announced last fall. Starbucks didn’t previously have company-wide service time goals for all types of orders.
The changes should improve the customer and worker experience, “reducing complexity and friction to enable baristas to showcase coffee, craft, and connection,” said Mike Grams, who serves as Starbucks’ North America chief coffeehouse officer.
Starbucks is looking for a turnaround after drink delays and other issues led to disenchanted customers and rare sales declines. Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol, who took over in September, is seeking to make Starbucks more of a destination again, both for patrons who want to sit in its cafes and those who want to pick up something quickly.
For mobile and delivery orders, the wait should be no longer than 12 minutes from when the order is submitted, according to the training materials, though the priority for app orders should be having items ready within the estimated time shown to customers. For in-store and drive-through orders, the four-minute clock starts once the order is placed.
The company didn’t immediately disclose current wait times. In the past, Starbucks only formally tracked how much time customers spent at the handoff window in the drive-through.
The previous CEO observed that waits were one of the reasons some customers ordering on mobile were adding items to their cart but not completing their orders. And when anticipated wait times for mobile orders exceed 15 minutes, “that’s when we have people kind of bailing,” Niccol has said.
Improving wait times will require several changes. Starbucks is testing a new staffing model as Niccol has said that labor likely got “too thin” in certain areas. It’s training baristas on what it calls the Starbucks Craft System, a set of routines and technology for making the perfect drink and interacting with customers. The company is also working on a new algorithm to help prioritize the order in which drinks are made.
