Proper staffing for all day parts. Stand behind and up for their Partners, not the customers.

Pay increase, support staff not customer satisfaction, go back to the actual 3rd place mentality instead of focusing so much on speed and customization. Starbucks has turned into a fast food restaurant basically. If i wanted a job at McDonald's, I wouldve applied there

limit to drink modifications and less focus on bending over backwards for customer satisfaction when requests are unreasonable. Starbucks customers aren’t going to stop coming if you tell them no or if the menu changes.

Get rid of the customer connection score. Better pay. Less complicated drinks. Maybe no more new drinks for awhile & get rid of the layered Frappuccino’s that take too much time. Just have basic Frappuccino’s like we used to.

Honestly, adequate staffing. That’s all.

Edit: do away with or totally kill customer connection scores. The survey is horrendously written (coming from a person with professional training in assessment quality lol) and they’re no longer relevant.

Today, for example, I watched 30 mobile orders come in a minute. It kept coming. We have 2 espresso machines. I had 5 partners on bar. It wasn’t enough. We were still 20 minutes behind. When are we supposed to connect with hundreds of people who are pissed off that they’re late for work? We are a fast food service. The cafe atmosphere is dead, and Starbucks killed it.

Upcharge more for modifications, make it the more of them, the more the upcharge. It will limit them for many people and the silly ones will pay more for their disruption. Get rid of the fly 🪰 infested pastry cases with gross congealed eggs in them. Use the space for more prep and hand off area

Higher pay and better, more transparent opportunities for growth and promotion within the company. Also I’ve worked at local quality coffee shops in the past and I’d love it if more stores had the capabilities to create artisan espresso drinks— the focus on speed gets to me sometimes.

Scale down the food, it's too much if we're supposed to be a coffee shop. My stores UPH stays at a steady 75-80 all day with almost every order averaging at around $12-$15 smackers, too much to balance for a "coffee shop". Or just scaling things down in general menu wise.

pay increase. get rid of 1/3 the menu. update pastry case. ( it wastes food, time, energy, etc) better staffing. limit to modified drinks, over 4 mods and it you get charged extra.

Scrape the menu clean and rebuild it from the ground up. Hot brewed coffee only. Maybe some cream and sugar idk yet.

When I worked at Starbucks, my start rate was $9.75 (I was told that was the starting rate for everyone regardless of experience, meanwhile I was making the same rate as high school kids who worked there as a first job while I had 5+ years experience working in food/retail). A few months after we opened back up, they sent out this huge ass announcement saying they were going to bump up everyone’s pay raise due to our “hard work during the pandemic” but that it only applied to employees who were employed before September of last year. You wanna know how much of a “raise” I got as a “thank you” for working *so hard* during a pandemic?

$0.73 cents.

It felt like a slap in the face. I remember putting that in the weekly survey for weeks after that—they made such a big deal out of praising our hard work and while I appreciated the little up in my pay, it was most definitely *not* enough to be received as a “thank you.” especially coming from a company as big as Starbucks, who could probably afford to pay every employee $15 an hour and still have a shit ton of money left over.

It would’ve been nice had I started off making $11 an hour like I had been for the last two years up until that point. But making the same amount as some kid who had no job experience, while I had worked my ass off in jobs like Starbucks for 5+ years working my way up to get a decent pay, it was ridiculous. I get they were trying to keep things equal, but it felt like all of my hard work up to that point meant absolutely nothing because it was non-negotiable. That should’ve been my first red flag when I started at Starbucks, honestly.

Everyone here has made really great suggestions, so I just want to add one that affects me deeply: I want to be allowed to stand up for myself when a customer is disrespectful and rude. Without getting in trouble for it.

I want to be allowed to correct a customer more than once when they use the wrong pronouns on me. And I want to be allowed to refuse service until they do.

I'm a human being who deserves respect, and being forced to grin and bare disrespect from customers causes long term psychological harm to anyone, not just me. Every time they misgender me, and every time they ignore me when I correct them in favor of continuing to actively and loudly misgender me, it chips away at my soul.

We deserve the right to demand respect. We deserve the right to refuse service when we don't get basic respect.

less food, limit drinks, limit the modifications, better pay increase, more support for staff instead of only benefiting customers

My experience with Starbucks customers is that, generally, they believe they’re untouchable. They come in with the intention of being unreasonable and rude. The company doesn’t support baristas or stand behind us when we’re treated unfairly. We have to constantly act like nothing bothers us and that we’re always happy or we get in trouble or hurt the “customer connection” score. Which is a ridiculous metric. Any company that puts a number on customer happiness needs to get a grip. Customers wouldn’t have this complex if our menu wasn’t the way it is. There’s too many modification options. There’s too many drink options. The fact that you can have 15+ mods and only spend 2 dollars more than the base drink makes no sense. I don’t understand why we don’t charge more when people want 15 scoops of vanilla bean or 20 pumps of syrup. I don’t feel that any position is paid what they should be for the work they’re putting in. It’s unfair that after almost 3 years, I’ve only gotten 3 dollars as a raise and (considering the little info I’ve gotten so far on the new raise) they really just bump me up to whatever the new starting pay is. I’m pretty sure the baristas I’m training next week are getting paid 50 cents more an hour than I currently make. I don’t know a single person who would call that fair. We don’t have enough staffing ever. I’m noticing that my store can’t keep anything cleaned appropriately because of staffing.

Finally banning all the wild customizations! I don’t have time to be adding matcha to your cold foam and layering your iced teas!

a staffing requirement that mandates at LEAST 4-5 people on the floor at all times. the biggest reason why i left was because my shift was ALWAYS bare bones and it was exhausting.

Yes. Of course more money would make it feel like this job is actually worth it

The single most positive thing Starbucks could do for the customer and employee experience would be to eliminate mobile ordering. I get it, we get tons of mobile orders every day but I have a hard time believing that we'd lose tons of business if mobile ordering disappeared. These people would either come in or go through the drive thru. When I started at Starbucks, cafe/support bar was a cake walk compared to Drive thru bar. Now it's just a matter of picking which nightmare you want. There's no warming up new partners on the slower bar, and because of mobile orders I might only have one customer in my cafe, but they're still waiting twenty minutes for their drink because thirty people mobile ordered while she was reading the menu. I worked a shift with no mobiles a couple of weeks ago (they were disabled due to several call outs) and we were still really busy, but we could manage. We have a really high volume store, but a 5 partner play is completely doable with minimal stress without mobile orders turned on. I was able to get a partner on a practice shift some much needed bar time without completely overwhelming her. The worst thing about mobiles though is that it's no longer even a time saver for those using it. Just due to the sheer numbers of mobile orders most people are still waiting 5-10 minutes when they arrive to pick up their orders.

1. Stop with ridiculous modifications. I know people have their tastes, but so many things are getting out of hand. There should be a limit!
2. Starbucks needs to stop trying to please every customer (my job shouldn’t be on the line if i don’t make “every moment right”). Customer connect has lost its meaning
3. There should be limits on the number of things people order, unless it’s paid ahead of time (ex. Travelers, 20 Frappuccino’s, 20 sandwiches)

Please make it more reasonable to ban aggressive customers. I had a man berate me when I was alone and it was really scary. He had the nerve to come back again today because he knew we couldn’t do anything. We shouldn’t have to be afraid of our customers.

I need $20 per hour

24 dollars an hour would be a "godsend" (what min wage would be if it increased with the cost of everything else)

Ask baristas what music they like and design playlists based off of employee tastes

Start us at $15-17/hr and SSVs at $19-22/hr would be THE LEAST they could do for all the harassment we have to deal with. Lyra sessions aren’t even that good lmao.

Start serving lattes and cappuccinos as main drinks instead of Frappuccino’s and refreshers.

And improve workers conditions.

Better staffing, fake food replicas so we don’t get flies and waste food all the time, and charge more for more complicated orders. It’s really annoying when someone tells you to make a blended dragon drink with cold foam but BLEND the cold foam too, then gets angry that you decided to skip the cold foam making process and just add in the sweet cream.

1. Kill the customer connection metric. The results are almost entirely out of barista control, and it's appallingly clear when you look at the comments left by customers. 1/7 connection, was out of mango dragonfruit.

2. End skeleton staffing. I was told I should be thankful I got more than 1 barista to close when we're doing 15 to 20 halves the last two hours, and we only got it because we have hella incidents. My Daily agrees with this labor justification. We have lost four baristas this month and I'm listed as a reference for another six. Nobody is getting decent weekly hours but we're all being ran into the fucking ground every single shift.

3. For the love of all that is good please fix the app/POS inventory. Why did we hear about MOP tracking inventory back in 2017 and what happened to it? I'm so tired of the "Hm, there's only two left of this item, should I mark it out?" dilemma. If you do mark it out, someone will come in and ask about it and chastise us for having an incorrect inventory on the app. If you don't mark it out, someone will order 3. Guaranteed.

4. Stop aggressively covering up unionization attempts after firing union organizers for non-issues previously not observed in the partner prior to union organization. Starbucks cannot claim to be not anti-union and repeatedly show they will do anything to stop a union from forming.

Let’s just say it— get rid of fraps

Pay a living fucking wage. Would’ve stayed if I’d made the money I’m worth

More staff, getting our breaks on time, and I admit a raise would really boost morale.

there should be a limit to how many drinks+food items you can order through DT. it’s ridiculous how many people order 7+ drinks and get impatient when it’s not automatically ready. but i’d also love to be able to give rude customers the same energy. it’s frustrating having to act like a doormat no matter how rude the customer is… if we keep tolerating it then it just perpetuates the problem.

Throw the entire concept of labor being the responsibility of the barista out the window. There's no reason a partner should get reprimanded for staying until the job is done

More money. That is all. Give me $35/hr and I will diligently perform my duties until the day I die.

Pay increase and Make Communication better

Get rid of "making the moment right" equaling giving rude customers free stuff. They know if they throw a fit that a manager might give them stuff, it's like giving candy to children to stop a tantrum. Just let us deny them service and be done with it.

get janitors

Get rid of lazy partners and reward those who actually have good work ethic with a pay increase.

Too many times I've run into DMs and SMs who are afraid of toxic, shitty, lazy partners just cause they are "tenured" and don't want to get their hands dirty by canning them. What ends up happening? The good partners end up leaving due to the environment and the culture the shitty partners created.

get rid of mobile orders

How significant are we talking

pay me more, get rid of frappuccinos

Get rid of mobile orders

Mandatory gratuity for any beverages with excessive customizations. Limit on order sizes for drive through. Actual upward promotion (I have had 5 DM's over 6 years and none of them worked in a store before and it shows). Remove or revamp mobile order. If we're going to be treated as the luxury coffee shop I want to make more than minimum wage. Clarity that half our menu is highly caffeinated and not for children. Partner resources that actually work for the partners.

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Not to prioritize window times so highly. Quality coffee over quick coffee would make this place so much more palatable.

Allow us to stop rewarding abusive customers, more staff, 15-17 dollars an hour, stop giving a shit about drive times

Pay a living wage, and stop rewarding shitty abusive customers.

Put people before profit. Lol. That would never fucking happen.

Proper staffing and not letting customers treat us like trash

Higher pay and get rid of customer connection score. It is not accurate.

Proper staffing and training, pay increase, customization limitations and higher window times. My store is super busy constantly and it doesn’t allow for new staff to get trained properly so there are people who have been there for YEARS and still don’t know how to do certain things. My store needs to train barista PROPERLY so we don’t run into so many issues that we usually do

Pay increase, better staffing, stop pushing so hard on customer connections, and support staff instead of appeasing customers for any little thing

HIRE MORE PEOPLE. If we had enough people staffed, nothing else would be that annoying.

Going through these comments is reassuring because I pretty much agree with every single take on here, and I’m glad I’m not the only one thinking these things. Starbucks just doesn’t really care about its partners…

Everything.

Stop skeletal staffing. Actually give stores sufficient labor hours to staff them. We keep getting told that our labor hours are being cut because we're not earning enough profit but the reason that we are earning less profit is because we can't adequately serve the customers that we have with the abysmal staffing situation that we have. And actually show appreciation and incentivize your long-term employees. A huge part of your problem is turnover rate. In a business where regulars are such an important part of your customer base and where you're trying to foster a feeling of familiarity and a welcoming atmosphere then having constant streams of new employees who do not do their job as well because they are not practiced and skilled at it and who do not know your regulars has a serious negative effect on the business.

I have regulars who will only come when I am on shift, who have told me that if I ever transferred stores they would follow me to whatever store I transfer to, who gave me Christmas presents this past Christmas. But yet I see no incentives or motivation to keep giving the 150% effort that I give to this job. In fact I often feel underappreciated and like I am being negatively affected by how long I've been at this job, because I am more expensive to pay per hour than someone brand new. But I do work that is worth far more than what I get paid per hour anyway and I have stuck with this job even though that's true because I love it. I love the customers I love my coworkers I love the work. But I am tired of having to fight for basic appreciation and a living wage. I am tired of having to fight to have full-time hours when I was hired to be a full-time employee. I'm tired of going above and beyond the requirements of my job as a trainer only to have my trainees end up scheduled for more hours each week than I have simply because they cost less per hour.

Make a drink order limit in the dt. And on mobiles. Standing up for staff.

Reading through these comments, I think I have a pretty good store. I just think eliminating drive time focus would be better than the customer connection score. Maybe revamp it, but cc is what makes Starbucks different. If we weren’t penalized for drive times, we could create better connections and happier customers while still working our butts off in a healthy way. You are allowed to ask people to leave if they escalate a situation and you are allowed to call the police. It’s in the trainings. My SM or DM would never be mad at us for stuff like that.

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I feel like Uber and Mobile shouldn't be allowed in Cafe stores. All it does is slow down service and we constantly get moaned at by people in store. Had it so many times, they moan it takes longer and I have to explain I making a huge take out order.

If not removed, heavily modified. Limits on mods, limit on number of items and extra time to get it done.

Yes

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