The cup that runneth over at Starbucks may soon be your own, as Josh reports. The company plans to let customers bring their own cups to cut down on trash, but analysts are skeptical this can be achieved profitably.
Operationally, think this through for a second.
Starbucks is introducing a new vessel its employees will have to clean. There is a risk of overfilling larger cups and losing margin in the process. Handing the vessel back to the customer (through a drive-through window, no less) risks spilling hot coffee on them (and in their car) or spilling it before the handover is made, requiring a new order.
All that would result in lost time and money in a business that requires speed and accuracy.
It could become a nightmare for a company also contending with overworked employees and unionization pushes.
Is there a more succinct example of unintended consequences? Maybe the company will learn how to make the feature work and earn money on it. Analysts don’t think so, at least for now.
Although the biggest risk to the Starbucks’ bottom line would be for the company to abandon sugar in the name of customer health across the board, since the substance is more addictive than cocaine—and presumably more addictive than caffeine, too. But that would be foolish.
Classic chat comment from tonight's Dispatch Live:
"You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning"
Whew! I just submitted my Academy Of Management paper on endogamy and the 1843 Indiana Anti-Slavery Yearly Meeting split.
If I had a do-over, I'd reframe it as a personal conflict between two headstrong leaders leading two competing perspectives on anti-slavery: gradualist colonization and immediatism abolitionism. Still, I introduced organizational endogamy, showing how it can affect conflicts in an organization. Interesting was how the leaders of the two sides were intermarried, and had family deeply involved with 'the other side". A civil war, indeed.