Win the Battle, Lose the War?

In our discussions of the Starbucks corporation, I have repeatedly called your attention to the fact that the company cannot in reason expect to compete with the various fast-food companies that also sell coffee by taking a low-cost strategy. People go to a McDonald’s or a Burger King when they want a fast cup of brew that they can drink on the way to work or at their desk along with the other fast-food groups (salt, fat, sugar and grease). These people will not pay $4 for a coffee-house product, any more than the people who are looking for a traditional coffee house experience (quality food and drink, quiet atmosphere, clean and comfortable space to work, socialize or relax, and so on) would be likely to go to a hamburger stand and sit on the plastic bench seats. But apparently, no one told the Starbucks people this…

According to a report provided to Yahoo by the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks has become the latest firm to begin applying Motion Study to its operations. Using a stopwatch and a selection of elementary tasks, the company is attempting to get its store personnel to shave seconds off each drink produced and work more efficiently in serving each customer. Despite the rather “gee-whiz!” tone of the article, the science of Motion Study is not exactly new; it finds its roots in the work of Frederick Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, roughly a century ago. Motion Study is the forerunner of the modern sciences of ergonomics and work design, and has been making work safer, faster, and more efficient (hence more profitable) in virtually every sector you can imagine for decades. But I have to wonder how this will translate to what is, at its heart, a personal service business…

As I’ve mentioned to my own students for years now, Starbucks isn’t really selling you coffee; you could make the same beverages at home for pennies on the dollar. They are selling you speed and convenience, but you can get those values from the new McDonald’s “McCafe” products just as easily, and at about half the price. To a very large extent, what Starbucks (and most other coffee house operations) are selling you is the experience – it is sometimes described as a lifestyle – of taking your coffee, and possibly your leisure, at a non-exclusive neighborhood social club, or whatever your equivalent happens to be. They can’t give you that if their entire focus is on processing everyone through the line as quickly as possible, with as little wasted effort and motion as they can. But they can easily destroy whatever remaining similarity they might have had to an actual neighborhood coffee house if they proceed in this fashion…

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not opposed to Motion Study or any other type of operational efficiency improvement; it’s a sound concept that has saved a lot of good companies from ruin and actually contributed to an improved standard of production throughout the industrialized world. I’m just questioning whether such measures will, by themselves, be enough to counter the creeping threat of fast-food and convenience-store coffee. Maybe Starbucks should have their store personnel spend some of the time they’re going to be saving on production times getting to know their customers; memorizing people’s names and regular orders and any personal information the customers happen to drop. Because while it can’t be denied that getting your cup of coffee 23 seconds faster in the morning would be nice, being greeted by name, asked if you’d like your usual, and being given the correct product (your "usual") without having to name it would probably go a lot farther towards making that $4 beverage seem worth the price you’re paying for it…