Frater Reinvents Starbucks to Improve Experience

SEATTLE, Wash. - Starbucks recently launched a web site offering its customers the chance to pitch ideas for how the firm can improve its stores and operations. Frater Howard Schultz (Theta-Iota, Northern Michigan Univ.), CEO and Founder, says this effort seeks to get back to the basics of what made the once local store reconnect with what the customer wants.

Despite some skepticism from critics, the MyStarbucksIdea.com web site has now been flooded with thousands of ideas.

These range from free birthday coffees to express tills for quick orders.

New brew

Starbucks is promoting the new feedback website from its main corporate online page, and also via leaflets at its more than 10,000 US stores.

Hoping that the feedback suggestions will come up with good ideas to boost flagging sales, the Seattle-based chain has also just launched a new cheaper "regular" coffee called Pike Place Roast.

This coffee will be brewed in advance, rather than made individually for each customer, but Starbucks insists that any not sold after 30 minutes will be thrown away. Hit by accusations that standards have fallen in recent years, in February Starbucks shut all of its US branches for three-and-a-half hours for staff training.

The moves are all the idea of Frater Schultz who returned to the top job in January following the dismissal of previous boss Jim Donald.

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