Starbucks’ Store Congestion Issues Continue

While the big thing on customers’ minds right now at Starbucks is the Unicorn Frappucino, a multi-colored slice of mayhem that changes colors when mixed with a straw, some reports suggest that earlier-noted problems of customer flow may still be giving Starbucks fits.

The first three months of the year proved less than sound for Starbucks, which had seen a consumer traffic stall that brought about a loss in profit ground for the company. It got so bad, in fact, that the company offered restrained profit guidance and, at one point, the stock lost five percent of its value on the strength of shockingly negative after-hours trading.

Easily one of the biggest problems the company was seeing was that its mobile ordering and payment systems were actually working too well. Customers were able to easily place and pay for orders online, then drop in and collect the order.

The problem was that there were so many online orders coming in, and customers in the shops, that those making the coffee drinks in question ran into a major problem with getting everything together in a timely fashion.

Starbucks has since been working to fix that—it even opened a mobile-only location to test out the concept—and reports suggest the issue has begun to turn around. If it’s beginning to turn around, though, that means it’s still a problem on at least some end.

It might seem counter-intuitive that a coffee shop with a crowding problem could fix its issues with a multicolored coffee drink. The Unicorn seems to have just been an item geared toward drawing customers, and that’s perfectly rational.

A company that’s seeing customers leave needs to do something special to draw them back; it doesn’t matter if the problems are fixed if no one comes back in. So the Unicorn Frappucino is just a bit of bait to pull everyone back in; the biggest fix is improving the flow of beverages to better match online ordering.

Online ordering and mobile payments systems can be a great addition to a business’ operations, but the rest of the business needs to be ready to accommodate the influx of customers. Starbucks has shown both points clearly, and even a possible way to draw customers back when the balance doesn’t quite hold.