Starbucks warned to chop customer wait times as sales start to slip

Starbucks is being urged to brew up ways to expedite wait times.

There’s nothing worse than a barista backup during morning rush — and as Starbucks sales sink in 2024, experts are urging the coffee giant to speed up the process to boost customer loyalty.

The coffee roaster reported plummeting profits for the first time in years last quarter, as the company faced boycotts and inflation.

The Seattle-based bean pusher has been fighting back with BOGO deals and value bundles in recent months.

But industry experts reveal that it isn’t just the high cost of product that is driving consumers away — it’s the egregiously long wait.

“There are gripes about wait times, the standard of service, and the ambience of cafes. To many, Starbucks feels somewhat less special than it once did,” Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, told Daily Mail, adding that the chain is “right to try to offer more value” in an attempt for retention.

But lowering prices, he noted, is “basically an attempt to paper over the cracks,” suggesting that climbing wait times are the underlying reason for customer base loss.

Data shows that some caffeine fiends now wait up to 40 minutes for their morning lattes amid staffing cuts, which left baristas reportedly unable to fulfill orders in a timely fashion.

“We have customers coming to our stores today, or on mobile order pay, who don’t fulfill their transaction because of wait times,” Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan said earlier this year, per Daily Mail.

While the company previously denied being understaffed, Narasimhan said that the java giant sees “opportunities” to improve the speed of service, although he did not detail if the company had concrete plans to address the issue.

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz recently penned a lengthy LinkedIn post urging the coffee chain to overhaul its US operations to “focus on the customer experience.”

“One of their first actions should be to reinvent the mobile ordering and payment platform — which Starbucks pioneered — to once again make it the uplifting experience it was designed to be,” he wrote.