Why Isn’t Order Ahead Available at Starbucks?
The Business:
As a business, a coffee shop must successfully implement two key components to define its success: speed and convenience.
With most Starbucks locations offering a drive-thru while maintaining a café, along with door-delivering services, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that baristas must maintain to achieve both speed and convenience.
Barista responsibilities vary but primarily consist of core duties such as displaying java knowledge, making a wide array of coffee and espresso-based drinks, portraying a friendly demeanor to all customers, and maintaining a suitable and clean work environment, all while incorporating register knowledge and cash-handling in a fast-paced setting. Alongside these duties, drinks must be precise and correct. Customer satisfaction is the top priority at any Starbucks location.
Behind the counter, running a café consists of the initial taking of the order, then the crafting of the drink, and handing it out. Most Starbucks also run a drive-thru, meaning that all the drinks being ordered and set to be made are mixed with the café orders. It requires a skilled barista with a love for the company they work for and a general talent for making drinks to maintain the necessary speed to ensure customer satisfaction and minimal wait time. This speed is what contributes to the convenience of going to any coffee shop – being able to stop by on your daily commute and get a drink as quickly as possible is what keeps Starbucks in business.
Starbucks is known for high customer satisfaction, through its proper execution of conveniently quick services and the production of delicious drinks. Any measure that is taken is one to maintain this level of quality and satisfaction.
Mobile orders may hinder baristas from establishing these successful customer encounters if they must incorporate them alongside the café and drive-thru orders. In certain circumstances, taking these mobile orders may be harmful to business.
The Staff:
While Starbucks offers an option to order via their mobile app, and certain locations may be available on other delivery services that allow consumers to purchase on their mobile device for a small delivery fee, these options are not always available.
When a particular location is at its peak hour, the management may decide to temporarily pause mobile orders. This is done when a business is exceeding what its staff is capable to execute comfortably and efficiently. It is a precautionary method to ensure the quality of outgoing products, as well as their established speed requirements.
Issues can arise within a staff when the quality of each team member is not up to standard, an employee has fallen ill, an employee is either late or skips their assigned shift, or the specific location is short-staffed. Both the store general manager and assistant manager must take necessary action to ensure that their store doesn’t slack or decline in quality due to these potential strenuous circumstances.
Sometimes, if a store is dealing with one of these scenarios, it becomes too difficult to maintain drive-thru, café, and mobile order efficiency. Since Starbucks often receives payment via check at the end of the month through delivery services, as a percentage rather than the entire profit, it technically is not mandatory for the staff.
In any business, the top priority is “real” customers. “Real” means the people who the staff is greeting face-to-face, who have already purchased and begun to wait for their product. Anyone who physically enters a Starbucks has taken the time to stop by and may be on their way to work, or class. Whereas a mobile order is likely someone who is at home, or already at work or school, and can easily cancel and receive a full refund for their order.
Whether it be that the Starbucks staff is not doing their best or being short-staffed along with factors such as calling in sick or running late, the management of each Starbucks location is trained to do their absolute best. In doing so, they must execute calls that are necessary to accommodate their staff so that they can function to their highest ability, and to prioritize all customers in an orderly fashion so that everyone receives their order as quickly as possible.
The App:
Another factor to take into consideration the next time you find your local Starbucks unavailable on the Starbucks app, or any other delivery service, is technological error or malfunction. While these delivery services achieved popularity due to their high success rate, there are unseen issues that can hinder them from providing service.
Issues of app functionality are outside the control of the staff. Roadblocks in delivery services such as glitches, app crashes, or mandatory updates, are crucial to the quality of these mobile services and cannot be avoided or rushed. It is also outside of the control of the Starbucks staff. That’s the reason Why Isn’t Order Ahead Available at Starbucks.
Conclusion:
Now we have learnt ‘Why Isn’t Order Ahead Available at Starbucks?’, An option to order ahead can arguably enhance this factor of convenience when buying a Starbucks drink. Being able to order your specific order in the palm of your hand, from wherever you may be, is a convenient privilege made available to us through these mobile apps. However, when considering all these listed factors that range from the app itself to the responsibilities of a barista, it is sometimes unavailable. Whether the Starbucks app is down, or they are paused on differing mobile delivery services, the reason simply varies whenever it occurs.
It is important as a loyal customer to be considerate, and flexible in situations such as these. Understanding that whether it be a staffing issue or a technical error, the overall goal in any Starbucks location is to provide the highest quality of service possible to all customers. While it is nice to order ahead, and potentially skip a painfully long line, a sense of order and systematic procedures is necessary for baristas to craft every order quickly and efficiently.
