"Marketed as “a completely different Starbucks built on effortless convenience” when it opened last November, this store—called Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go—is the first of three that the coffee company plans to debut in New York."

"It is also a striking symbol of Starbucks’s quiet brand transformation from warm gathering spot to tech-enabled caffeine depot and of the challenges the company faces today."

"In the 1990s, Starbucks began to position itself as “the third place,” a spot between home and work where customers could find comfort, community, and good coffee."

"Deep Brew is the brains behind the Starbucks mobile app, which is so popular that in recent years it has handled more mobile payments than Apple Pay or Google Pay."

"A bottleneck that emerged was “food offerings that were eight or nine syllables.” Allen explains: “Starbucks has taught us to rattle off drink orders like ‘Iced Venti Nonfat Latte with an extra shot.’ That made sense inside stores, where they didn’t want customers saying, ‘Give me the 1.'”"

"But in the drive-through, Starbucks learned that extra syllables can cause delays. Menu boards now feature large, helpful visuals and paired food and beverage items to help simplify and expedite orders."

"They received a large digital monitor instead, like the one that greets customers at the Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go store."

"“What they’ve instead been getting with more frequency lately is a rushed order, thrown together by a team of baristas struggling to balance an unreasonable amount of tasks all at once. You’ve encouraged us to build connections in our communities but aren’t sharing with us the means to do so.”"

"If the people who are serving the customer are not happy, committed, and passionate about what they’re doing, the whole experience is going to suck"

"“The word we kept coming back to was stimulating,” he says, but not in the caffeine sense: “The feeling of being stimulated by the sounds, sights, smells, and connections of the café.”"

"This wasn’t home, it wasn’t work; it was a moldable space in between."

"Bedbury shared with me a photo of the grease board where these ideas were diagrammed. In the middle, it says The 3rd place."

"By many measures, Starbucks is an equitable and generous employer. According to the company’s latest environmental and social impact report, 69% of its workforce is female, and 47% is minority."

"Executive compensation is tied to achieving diversity benchmarks, and the company pairs BIPOC managers with a corporate executive as part of a mentorship program."

"The company’s health plan seems less radical today as well."

"The MIT Living Wage Calculator says that a single adult needs to earn at least $20 an hour to meet today’s minimum standard of living in New York City, $23 in the Bay Area, and $19 in Seattle."

"“Partners miss that sense of community, and we feel pretty strongly that a union is a community.”"

"Starbucks launched an initiative in 2015 to open more cafés in underrepresented neighborhoods, to demonstrate that “it wasn’t the coffee we were selling, it was the sense of community,” as Schultz put it."

"Pandemic or not, the third place exists. People will always want somewhere to gather. No one needs a green siren to call them."