Global brand icon Starbucks doesn’t just rest on its laurels, in terms of providing a memorable customer experience. The company engages its employees in such a way that they, in turn, provide great customer experiences.
Scott Maw, Chief Financial Officer for Starbucks, discussed these themes during this week’s Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Brokers Conference.
“It’s really important to remind you we are playing the long game,” Maw explained, according to Seeking Alpha. “We are a $20 billion company with an average ticket size of $5. We are growing the top line at 10% and the bottom line at, at least 15%. And if you are going to do that on our great big network, we are going to have to think strategically and frankly aggressively about the types of investments that we make and the types of things that we drive from an innovation standpoint. Our growth is built on innovation. It’s built on the experience that our people provide in the stores. And if we don’t invest, if we don’t lean in there, then we are going to start to see softness on the top line. And so we are committed across all these strategies.”
Maw said that Starbucks refers to its employees as partners because the vast majority of them are eligible to participate in a stock compensation program for Starbucks.
“As we got into 2015, well ahead of and greater than the mandated minimum wage and pay changes and benefit changes that are coming down, we leaned in on how we pay our people,’ he explained. “So that included compensation, that included adding a food benefit on shift, which was a great thing for our partners and also a great thing for us, because it reinforces what’s becoming a growing part of Starbucks business. Food is growing faster than beverage in our U.S. stores and so providing a food benefit was a great way for us to introduce our partners to our food across broad day parts. And then we went to four years of college paid in 2015. And for the first time, we really started to invest in what we call partner digital. So, all the things that we talked about around mobile and Mobile Order & Pay, that’s been building for a while. But frankly, we fall a little bit behind with partner facing digital.”
But, Maw believes Starbucks’ customer-facing digital and mobile apps are industry leading.
“I don’t think there is anyone out there doing it as well as we do,” he said. “The technology that faces our partners, I think, we would fall a little bit behind. So, we have in the last year we were leaned in on upgrading our POS system, basic things like improved laptops and printers in the store, handheld apps that allowed us to move from paper and pencil inventory system to a scanner based inventory system. A lot of this technology has been out there a while. We have just been a little bit slow to roll it out and so we are significantly accelerating that. And as we move into 2016, even more on partner digital, so more things around apps for scheduling, a little bit more technology around how we determine schedules, the easier way for our partners to understand things that are going on in the store around buying routines, around our food and things like that. So, all of that will accelerate as we get into 2016.”