Starbucks will hire more baristas and write plans to deploy automation, said Coffee giant general, Brian Niccol.
This decision, which is part of its strategy to win back customers, comes while other food and drinks are increasingly adopting technology to reduce costs.
Also on Tuesday, the company announced worse financial results than expected when its sales continue to drop.
Niccol was brought to Starbucks last year in charge of overthrowing the company while fighting the price increase and consumers reduced expenses.
“Over the past two years, we have in fact removed store workforce. I think that in the hope that the equipment could compensate for the abolition of work,” Nicol said during a call with investors.
“What we find is … it was not a precise hypothesis with what happened.”
The increase in staff was tested in a handful of stores at the time when Mr. Niccol joined the firm in September 2024. He widened the approach to include around 3,000 stores this year.
At the same time, the company said it would withdraw from the deployment of its mermaid manufacturing system.
Appointed according to the emblematic logo of Starbucks, it is a series of technologies and equipment that were introduced in 2022 to help rationalize operations.
Niccol stressed that taking more staff would mean higher costs, but said that he “put on a certain growth to come with investment”.
In addition to recruiting more baristas, Starbucks also reorganizes its cafes, its menus and the company’s dress code.
Starbucks said in April that his baristas would wear dark shirts with unique colors to “allow our emblematic green apron to shine and create a feeling of familiarity for our customers”.
In January, he reversed the rules for his cafes in North America which allowed people to use their facilities even if they had not bought anything.
Changes were a tour of a policy introduced six years ago which allowed people to linger in Starbucks outlets and use their toilets without buying.
So far, Mr. Niccol’s recovery efforts have seen limited results.
The latest financial figures of the company have shown that world sales have dropped 1% in the three months at the end of March, the fifth consecutive quarterly decrease.
But while trade has continued to show weakness in the United States, which is its largest market, sales have increased in China and Canada.
Starbucks’ shares have dropped by more than 6.5% of prolonged exchanges after the announcement of profits.
