Starbucks to add 'hundreds of thousands of seats' back to its stores

Starbucks plans to add hundreds of thousands of seats across stores to revive the in-cafe, sit-down experience. The company identifies a shift toward mobile ordering that prioritized pickup areas over seating and made visits feel overly transactional. The turnaround strategy, called Back to Starbucks, applies a design-led approach to address an overarching in-store design problem and restore reasons for customers to linger. New leadership observed crowded outlets and insufficient seating during visits and intends to re-emphasize seating and in-cafe enjoyment as a core point of difference for the brand.

""When it's truly a third place, I think that's our point of difference," Niccol told audiences at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on September 16. "It's why people fell in love with Starbucks. It's why I fell in love with Starbucks 20 years ago.""

""I walked into stores, and outlets were covered. There weren't enough seats. It was clear that we had prioritized a waiting area for mobile order," Niccol said, adding, "We had done some things that did not deliver on having a great in-cafe experience.""

"Since those early days, Niccol added, Starbucks has become "very transactional.""

"Niccol's plan to turn the company around, called " Back to Starbucks," hinges on the thesis that Starbucks is suffering from an overarching design problem-and it's using a design-led approach to make the Starbucks experience actually enjoyable again."

Read at Fast Company