1. Starbucks offers Ipad's that customers can use to read book with a huge number and variety of books and even play games. I.E. A customer walks in and buy a drink and then they can go take the Ipad and sit down and read something or even play a game on it. When they are ready to leave they put the Ipad back and leave the store. You will need some sort of security system for this but it shouldn't be too hard to work out.
2. Starbucks can sell their coffee and tea by the pot. I.E. 5 Friends can come into a Starbucks and buy a pot of coffee that they can all enjoy.
3. Starbucks makes "favorite drink clubs." This idea ties in with idea number 2. I.E. Some members of the Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha club can decide to go to a Starbucks and buy a pot of White Chocolate Mocha. The club can be made on the Facebook, or have its own website part of the Starbucks website, or be a smartphone app that people can download and use. This would be a great way for people with the same Starbucks taste to meet each other.
4. Starbucks makes a volunteer to work program for people interested in working there. The program is for people in stores and in roasting facilities. I.E. Someone is interested in working at Starbucks and they volunteer for a certain amount of time, after that time if Starbucks views them as good enough to hire for pay, they hire them.
5. Starbucks offers a large selection of vegan and lacto-vegetarian food options at the food bar. I.E. Vegan subs, vegan baklava, lacto-vegetarian baklava, vegan and vegetarian cakes.
6. Starbucks offers huge farm fresh salads. Only in select locations that have a farm close enough to supply the Starbucks with a salad.
7. Starbucks offers major prizes in their reward program once a year like car, house, vacation, cruise.
8. Starbucks makes it's own library with books and Ipads. I.E Most people in a bookstore don't buy books anyways, they just read with their cup of coffee and leave, so they might as well have a library.
9. Kind of like idea 8, Starbucks opens up in Libraries nationwide.
10. Starbucks introduces real fruit smoothies. I.E. Banana Strawberry Smoothie consisting of 8 ripe frozen bananas and 1 cup of frozen strawberries.
What do you guys think? Does anyone else have ideas for other businesses? One video that really inspired me to start thinking up of ideas and sending it to companies is
#'s one and 2 sound like a pretty good idea to me (you could get cheaper tablets like kindles instead of the iPad). The rest seem a bit far fetched though.
It's kinda funny, there is a local coffee franchise called Satalite here, and they pretty much do a lot of what you are suggesting. We have a starbucks in our campus library.
You've got me on 4 and 5! I work in a field (construction!) that's hugely male-dominated and doesn't allow me to talk to sane, normal people often. I'd love to volunteer at a starbucks once a week or so. Also vegetarian options? Yes please!
Oh, and at least in Canada, there's a large link between the Indigo/Chapters bookstores and Starbucks. Quite a few of said bookstores have Starbucks' inside them. So #9 is / has been a reality for a while now :D
you are of the opinion that starbucks needs to grow their business?
my first recommendation would be for them to stop burning the fuck out of their coffee and calling it "bold roast" like it's something any rational person would desire
I kinda wished their coffee tasted good so maybe start there. I still drink it because I'm a spineless consumer but you know, if they wanted.
5-10 all probably don't make sense economically, i.e. they won't get back what they were putting in/the market can't support the investment necessary. 4 doesn't work, it costs money to train people; volunteers are useless. 1 sounds like more trouble than its worth plus people have their own plus I won't be surprised if Starbucks lost money on people hogging the seats for extended reading periods. I basically hate every idea but 2 which I think is pretty smart and would work.
On August 29 2013 12:34 n.DieJokes wrote: I kinda wished their coffee tasted good so maybe start there. I still drink it because I'm a spineless consumer but you know, if they wanted.
they can't make it better. in order to standardize their huge supply chain they have to burn the coffee, which evens out the flavor and makes it consistent (which is what franchises are built on). so they have convinced an entire generation that coffee is supposed to taste like charcoal.
luckily, they are in the milkshake busyness, not the coffee busyness
On August 29 2013 07:42 ElizarTringov wrote: 1. Starbucks offers Ipad's that customers can use to read book with a huge number and variety of books and even play games. I.E. A customer walks in and buy a drink and then they can go take the Ipad and sit down and read something or even play a game on it. When they are ready to leave they put the Ipad back and leave the store. You will need some sort of security system for this but it shouldn't be too hard to work out.
2. Starbucks can sell their coffee and tea by the pot. I.E. 5 Friends can come into a Starbucks and buy a pot of coffee that they can all enjoy.
3. Starbucks makes "favorite drink clubs." This idea ties in with idea number 2. I.E. Some members of the Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha club can decide to go to a Starbucks and buy a pot of White Chocolate Mocha. The club can be made on the Facebook, or have its own website part of the Starbucks website, or be a smartphone app that people can download and use. This would be a great way for people with the same Starbucks taste to meet each other.
4. Starbucks makes a volunteer to work program for people interested in working there. The program is for people in stores and in roasting facilities. I.E. Someone is interested in working at Starbucks and they volunteer for a certain amount of time, after that time if Starbucks views them as good enough to hire for pay, they hire them.
5. Starbucks offers a large selection of vegan and lacto-vegetarian food options at the food bar. I.E. Vegan subs, vegan baklava, lacto-vegetarian baklava, vegan and vegetarian cakes.
6. Starbucks offers huge farm fresh salads. Only in select locations that have a farm close enough to supply the Starbucks with a salad.
7. Starbucks offers major prizes in their reward program once a year like car, house, vacation, cruise.
8. Starbucks makes it's own library with books and Ipads. I.E Most people in a bookstore don't buy books anyways, they just read with their cup of coffee and leave, so they might as well have a library.
9. Kind of like idea 8, Starbucks opens up in Libraries nationwide.
10. Starbucks introduces real fruit smoothies. I.E. Banana Strawberry Smoothie consisting of 8 ripe frozen bananas and 1 cup of frozen strawberries.
What do you guys think? Does anyone else have ideas for other businesses? One video that really inspired me to start thinking up of ideas and sending it to companies is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsuCFL-SQLg
As someone who has been working at Starbucks for well over a year now, I thought I'd respond to this.
1) Sounds like a cool idea, but it's not very practical. Think about how difficult it would be to put together to maintain this security system and maintain it, not to mention all the maintenance and updating the iPads would require. It would also be way to easy for stuff to spill on the iPads or for them to generally be treated poorly. In general Starbucks makes most of it's money from people who are in an out, people who use the lobby rarely order more than one or two drinks over the hour or two that they are their. So that would be alot of investment for little return.
2) They do that, at least for coffee. Ask for a french press for you and your friends to enjoy of your fav coffee next time you are in a starbucks, it's a pretty reasonable price. I agree it would be a good idea for teas as well, but for lattes and such it doesn't make much sense to make more than one serving at once, remember that those are handcrafted beverages ^.^
3) Actually a pretty good idea, you should go suggest it on their website.
4) Uhhh, idk how that would work. However as a supervisor... I'm way against this idea, lol. Way too much trouble and hassle to constantly be working with new people you have to train/teach things. Unless you want to volunteer to sweep our floors and take out the trash, I'll be the first one to hand you a broom and trash bags
5) I agree, they could do with some more vegan/gluten-free/etc options (I recently did a few weeks of a vegan diet, basically had to not look at our food case). Though, if your going to eat baklava you should just eat the real thing, else your likely to piss off some greek gods or something.
6) Another good idea, it would be cool to see Starbucks to use more local farms and such. I don't suspect they will want to do that kus of quality assurance though, and by that I just mean they want the experience to be the same regardless of what store you go to. Imagine if you couldn't go to your local Starbucks because all the cows on the farm they get thier milk from were sick.
7) Not a bad idea, in fact I don't think I've ever seen Starbucks do a contest like that, they do a lot of smaller personal things where you can get 5$ or something but nothing big.
8 & 9) See my points about 1 as they are basically the same. Starbucks wont do this as it would rather just open a store near/in a bookstore/library not run a bookstore/library.
10) Whats not real about the Starbucks smoothies? They get some fruit puree, a banana, a little milk, some protein powder and ice. Pretty straightforward, though they might have stuff added to the puree, I'm not sure what all is in that off the top of my head.
"What I want Starbucks to do" rather than how they could "grow its business".
Even then, I'd say offer $1 coffee on Mondays would be much better than all of the above combined. I only go to Starbucks for hot drip coffee and drink them at work (yes, there's a Starbucks inside the building).
I mean, Starbucks doesn't need more popularity, which seems to be the driving points of these 'improvements'. They need more ways to monetize like selling yogurt for 500% of its original cost (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/23/starbucks-yogurt-evolution-fresh-danone-dannon/2578137/). Opening libraries and lending out iPads certainly do not help lol...
On August 29 2013 12:34 n.DieJokes wrote: I kinda wished their coffee tasted good so maybe start there. I still drink it because I'm a spineless consumer but you know, if they wanted.
they can't make it better. in order to standardize their huge supply chain they have to burn the coffee, which evens out the flavor and makes it consistent (which is what franchises are built on). so they have convinced an entire generation that coffee is supposed to taste like charcoal.
luckily, they are in the milkshake busyness, not the coffee busyness
I like Starbucks and MacCafes ($1 small coffee) because they are consistent, not great, but far from terrible. This is why I see them as sanctuaries when I go to random countries that don't typically consume coffee.
#1. Stop offering shit house coffee and do it fucking properly. There are many ways to do it properly and they're doing none of them.
EDIT: Actually I remember one of my coffee buddies telling me a story that Starbucks created their own competition when they transitioned from La Marzocco Lineas to Super Auto machines. They flooded the market with cheap Lineas (apparently $1000 for each Linea), wannabe cafe owners bought it up and created cafes that were better than Starbucks (not that hard if you have a remote idea of anything coffee, or just get a good supplier to guide you).
This is the email response I got after I emailed them about it:
"I think that these are some spectacular ideas! What I am going to do is forward this to our Marketing team for their consideration.
We always want to hear what you think would improve your experience with Starbucks. I appreciate you letting me know how much customers would enjoy this.
I would also like to invite you to visit www.MyStarbucksIdea.com. This website is a forum where you can share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people's ideas and join the discussion that will help shape Starbucks future. Many of the ideas shared have already been turned into action." We would love to hear your feedback. Click here to take a short survey.
On August 29 2013 12:18 sam!zdat wrote: you are of the opinion that starbucks needs to grow their business?
my first recommendation would be for them to stop burning the fuck out of their coffee and calling it "bold roast" like it's something any rational person would desire
On August 30 2013 05:10 Race is Terran wrote: lol. anyone can think of ideas, but only a handful actually make that happen
It is true that anybody can come up with an idea. It isn't true that ideas are made to happen by a handful of people, usually, especially at large companies like Starbucks. It usually takes a large number of people working together. There is a reason why this thread is called "10 Ideas for Starbucks to Grow its Business" and not "10 Ideas for Starbucks to Grow its Business and exactly how to do it logistically speaking"
On August 29 2013 12:18 sam!zdat wrote: you are of the opinion that starbucks needs to grow their business?
my first recommendation would be for them to stop burning the fuck out of their coffee and calling it "bold roast" like it's something any rational person would desire
You are in the opinion that they shouldn't?
As a business, they absolutely should, but I don't think they need to expand their business. But I don't know how popular Starbucks is in Bulgaria. Maybe they "need" to expand up there. In the US, Starbucks is fucking everywhere, and their black coffee is really shitty, and that's coming from someone with a terrible palate. :/
But let's not kid ourselves, most people who go to Starbucks aren't there for the straight-up coffee, they're there for the sugary, creamy espresso drinks. And the people who do get coffee from there don't often care about the quality of the coffee, they just want the caffeine. They don't market themselves towards coffee connoisseurs, which is perfectly fine.
On August 30 2013 05:10 Race is Terran wrote: lol. anyone can think of ideas, but only a handful actually make that happen
It is true that anybody can come up with an idea. It isn't true that ideas are made to happen by a handful of people, usually, especially at large companies like Starbucks. It usually takes a large number of people working together. There is a reason why this thread is called "10 Ideas for Starbucks to Grow its Business" and not "10 Ideas for Starbucks to Grow its Business and exactly how to do it logistically speaking"
it takes a large number of people working together, but it all comes down to a handful of people in managemenet/leadership positions that ultimately judge whether the idea's are ideal or not. Those are the people that make or break the idea.
On August 29 2013 12:18 sam!zdat wrote: you are of the opinion that starbucks needs to grow their business?
my first recommendation would be for them to stop burning the fuck out of their coffee and calling it "bold roast" like it's something any rational person would desire
You are in the opinion that they shouldn't?
obviously not. Usually you can see one starbucks from the window of the other. Why the hell would I want them to expand? Our entire world is turning into nothing but starbucks stores, it's terrifying. One day they are going to shutter all the windows with kevlar and announce the new world order. They will forcefeed us all thousands of calories of pure corn syrup and beam us up to the mothership for processing
On August 29 2013 12:18 sam!zdat wrote: you are of the opinion that starbucks needs to grow their business?
my first recommendation would be for them to stop burning the fuck out of their coffee and calling it "bold roast" like it's something any rational person would desire
You are in the opinion that they shouldn't?
obviously not. Usually you can see one starbucks from the window of the other. Why the hell would I want them to expand? Our entire world is turning into nothing but starbucks stores, it's terrifying. One day they are going to shutter all the windows with kevlar and announce the new world order. They will forcefeed us all thousands of calories of pure corn syrup and beam us up to the mothership for processing
On August 29 2013 12:18 sam!zdat wrote: you are of the opinion that starbucks needs to grow their business?
my first recommendation would be for them to stop burning the fuck out of their coffee and calling it "bold roast" like it's something any rational person would desire
You are in the opinion that they shouldn't?
obviously not. Usually you can see one starbucks from the window of the other. Why the hell would I want them to expand? Our entire world is turning into nothing but starbucks stores, it's terrifying. One day they are going to shutter all the windows with kevlar and announce the new world order. They will forcefeed us all thousands of calories of pure corn syrup and beam us up to the mothership for processing
Crap... I'll probably have to go through a whole new training set when they launch that promo set. Sounds like I'll also be asked to work unreasonable hours on the mothership again too... sigh.
Lol, you guys make out Starbucks to be evil, it's just a business that has capitalized on the caffeine needs of the masses and the fact that the average person prefers to drink sugar milk with espresso than a cup of well brewed coffee. They have done it well too, their business focus is always on the customer and improving YOUR experience. Starbucks gives back to the community and while they do tend to spread they also try to integrate. Your average Starbucks Batista does not get paid terribly well, true, but they are given impressive benefits including full health, stock, and give you enough free coffee/drinks to have you addicted to caffeine for life (maybe their plan).
I'm not saying they are perfect or anything, nor do I claim they have "great coffee" (a very subjective topic) but they do have well maintained reliable coffee. All I am saying is that there is a reason that Starbucks has grown everywhere and stays successful.
Having said all that. I now must say that I support local Coffee Shops wholeheartedly as well. Nothing quite like a real professional Batista who knows how to tamp & grind their own beans, also... latte-art.
As someone who drops a steamy load everytime I have coffee, i hate to hear a girl ask me "want to meet at starbucks for a coffee and a chat". More like "want to meet at starbucks for your x-lax".
EPT
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