OPINION:
Hold onto your double tall non-fat vanilla latte.
Starbucks Corp. began offering drive-thru service several years ago and now finds itself playing catch-up with Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s and other fast-food giants that serve hot cups of joe to motorists on the go.
Still “pokey” in the drive-up lane, Starbucks lags behind the fast and furious Dunkin’ Donuts, whose drive-thru wait time was 2.9 minutes, compared to Starbucks’ 4.44 minutes, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
In between: Wendy’s, which clocked in at 3 minutes flat; Canadian-based coffee-and-doughnuts chain Tim Hortons, with 3.38 minutes; the ubiquitous McDonald’s, at 3.98 minutes; and Panera Bread, which delivered in 4.38 minutes and whose complex menu can leave you staring with every visit until you find and latch onto favorites. (Mine is the Fuji apple salad with chicken.
Starbucks, meanwhile, may be in a rut, trying to please all of its customer base all of the time with longstanding expectations and concoctions, while also trying to lure new customers who anxiously await a medium cup of black coffee to go, please and thanks.
To do research for this article, I visited my neighborhood Starbucks at lunchtime, where I was so determined to ensure the barista got my coworker’s beverage correct that I read it aloud: “A double tall non-fat vanilla latte.”
I also neglected to order my own medium black. When I returned to the newsroom, though, Ann said her concoction was “perfect.”
Ann knows her Starbucks, telling me that whatever Starbucks cafe she visits, things are always “consistent.” That’s exceptional for a coffee chain that has 14,000 cafes in the United States alone.
However, Starbucks’ sales growth is slowing, which helps to explain the push to please drive-through customers, including putting baristas’ faces on video screens and installing 2,800 screens across the country, Bloomberg reported.
Still, as the world’s largest coffee-shop chain, Starbucks must get the drive-through thing right — as it did with free Wi-Fi and encouraging customers to sit awhile and read a newspaper, or hop online and sip away. Genius.
The drive-thru restaurant customer operates on a different clock, however.
“Drive-throughs are a key to driving traffic — the issue is you have to be able to get people through,” said Brian Yarbrough, an analyst at Edward Jones investments company, told Bloomberg. At some point, “if they see there’s a huge line at the drive-thru, they’ll go down the street,” he said.
Also, I add, getting a specialized coffee perfect should be first and foremost on Starbucks’ must-do list.
Joe Pesci’s Leo Getz character said in “Lethal Weapon 2”: “They [get] you at the drive-thru!”
⦁ Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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