Starbucks Shares Shift in Strategy, to Automation and Expansion

The company noted that employee turnover was better than for the rest of the industry, but was still too high and that there was a focus on reducing it.

“We haven’t lived up to our end of the bargain with our partners,” Frank Britt, the chief strategy and transformation officer at Starbucks, said, referring to employees.

It was nearly three hours into the meeting before any executives brought up the issue of unionization. So far, more than 200 stores of the 9,000 Starbucks operates have unionized.

“On the subject of unionization, there are two paths,” said John Culver, group president of North America and chief operating officer, who is leaving the company at the end of September. “We can work together as partners, side by side, or we can have a third party between us. If we are working side by side, we can efficiently deliver solutions that support our partners in their jobs, support their physical, financial and mental well-being.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/business/starbucks-reinvention-strategy-employees.html