Idea

I know it sounds basic, but can't you make us that essential guarantee: You won't run out of brewed coffee?

Once in a rare while after filling a big order, I understand. But it just happens too often: I wait in line for 5 minutes get up to the front and I'm told I should wait N minutes get a coffee. I had that happen in three out of our visits to one store. It just happened again this morning in a store that was empty, no big orders in sight.

Solutions? More urns so you can keep them rotating? Thermoses for unfinished urns so you can make new ones? Warning systems on the urns to remind partners to make new pots in time (clever ones would be tied to sales activity on the register or at least time of day)? Putting resources into developing new brew systems as you have done for new barista systems?

Please don't assume that we're just terminally impatient. Sometimes, I am incredibly rushed but I'm squeezing in a visit to Starbucks to get my cup of coffee -- which is just how Starbucks should want me to think. I have to judge the line and often leave because I know it will take too much time. Or I do wait in line and get to the front and find now coffee and have to leave because I've run out of time. Those are lost sales. If I were you, I'd stand back and observe a store to see the people who head in and then leave or who don't get what they want and I'd calculate the cost of that lost business vs. the investment in brewing more coffee or in innovating with new systems.

But the bottom line is simple: I should expect that when I go to Starbucks I can get my coffee, 99 percent of the time. Is that a sensible goal? <<user:jarvis>>