{"id":323120,"date":"2019-10-13T08:07:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T06:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=323120"},"modified":"2019-10-13T08:09:27","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T06:09:27","slug":"starbucks-testing-stores-that-only-take-smartphone-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/trending\/323120-starbucks-testing-stores-that-only-take-smartphone-orders.html","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks testing stores that only take smartphone orders"},"content":{"rendered":"

How worried should we be about Starbucks\u2019s recent announcement that it plans to begin testing a\u00a0new type of store<\/a>\u00a0that only takes orders via mobile app \u2014 no cashiers?<\/p>\n

At first glance the image seems vaguely dystopian: person after person filing through, inevitably wearing\u00a0AirPods<\/a>, to pick up caffeine-and-sugar infusions they ordered by pressing a few buttons on their smartphones as they were leaving home \u2014 all without a moment of human interaction.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s more or less what\u2019s happening right now at regular Starbucks stores: the company already accepts mobile orders, and has more than\u00a016 million mobile users<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The drawback is that those users crowd the stores and cause bottlenecks at peak times;\u00a0in some outlets, the glut of mobile orders has gotten so bad that it\u2019s\u00a0discouraging walk-in customers<\/a>. Thus, the mobile-only store model is presumably a response to problems already created by mobile ordering.<\/p>\n

Experiments of this kind are increasingly common.\u00a0Amazon Go<\/a>\u00a0stores are cashier-less. Some\u00a0grocery stores<\/a>\u00a0let you scan items as you pick them up and economize on checkout time.<\/p>\n

And mobile ordering is becoming widespread for foods ranging from\u00a0salad<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0lobster<\/a>. So we might not be too far away from the day when mobile ordering and cashier-less purchasing are\u00a0the norm<\/a>, rather than the exception.<\/p>\n

Will we be better off for it?<\/h3>\n

In Starbucks\u2019s case, at least, mobile-only stores might actually work out well for customers. Those who want to order via mobile will be able to go to specialized stores optimized for handling them. And that will reduce congestion at other stores, meaning that people there won\u2019t have to spend as much time waiting for their drinks.<\/p>\n

As with many forms of product differentiation, the change might even increase demand for Starbucks coffee. Anyone who previously found Starbucks too time-consuming to stop in during their morning commutes will have a new, faster option. And people who had been driven off by the throngs of mobile-order customers might be able to come back.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s less clear, however, how mobile-only stores will affect Starbucks\u00a0employees.<\/p>\n

Some activists are trying to\u00a0push for laws<\/a>\u00a0that would put limits on the shift to cashier-less shopping, requiring that stores must have humans on hand to ring up customer orders. That\u2019s an onerous proposal \u2014 analogous to saying that every ATM should also have a bank teller\u00a0on hand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But still, you can see why there\u2019s concern. Presumably, cashier-less stores will need fewer employees, even if they do pull in a large number of new customers. And reducing congestion in regular Starbucks stores\u00a0might reduce staffing needs there as well.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the\u00a0drudgery factor<\/a>: Working in a mobile-only store will surely be a lot more monotonous, more like being employed on a factory assembly line than in a typical coffee shop, where give-and-take between workers and customers can be part of the appeal.<\/p>\n

There will be less human interaction \u2013 and what interactions there are might well be with\u00a0upset customers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also likely that the workers at mobile-only stores won\u2019t make nearly as much in tips. First off, customers might not feel an obligation to employees they don\u2019t interact with personally.<\/p>\n

Moreover, tipping using an app isn\u2019t observable to others, and there\u2019s\u00a0solid evidence<\/a>\u00a0that people take prosocial actions more frequently when others are watching. \u00a0In other words, people tend to tip more when they know they’re being observed.<\/p>\n

That said, the Starbucks app\u2019s default tipping options are on the order of 10% to 20% — higher than many people give with the typical change-in-jar approach. So if Starbucks pushes app tipping hard with notifications and alerts, there might not be too much of a shortfall.<\/p>\n

Better would be to still have a physical tip jar in mobile stores \u2014 or even to place a star on the order display board next to the name of anyone who tips.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a chance that mobile-only Starbucks might be beneficial overall, rather than dystopian. Or at least not as dystopian as the\u00a0pumpkin-spice latte<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now read: Mastercard and Visa pull out of Facebook\u2019s Libra<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Starbucks\u2019s case, at least, mobile-only stores might actually work out well for customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":270921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40380],"tags":[61350,9425],"class_list":["post-323120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-smartphone-orders","tag-starbucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323122,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323120\/revisions\/323122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}