🟧 The Starbucks reboot

Taking back the Third Place crown.

Kyle Chayka: I recently stopped at a rest area on a drive from New York City to Washington, DC, and went to the Starbucks counter for a coffee. (To be honest, I was hoping for a rest area with a Pret a Manger, because their coffee is lighter roast and their food is far fresher, but no such luck.) When the barista rang me up, he paused, and then told me my tall drip was actually free that day — I had happened to pick the drink that they were giving away as a promotion the day after the Super Bowl, to fight the collective hangover. I walked away with my coffee slightly bemused, but then I remembered that Starbucks’s newish CEO Brian Niccol (previously CEO of Chipotle) is on a campaign to overhaul the company and make us all think fondly of that green mermaid logo again.

It worked on me! It was the most pleasant encounter I’ve had with Starbucks in years. Niccol is trying to make Starbucks friendlier, more personal, higher touch — a little more like it felt back in the 2000s when it was spreading across the country. He wrote about his goals in an open letter late last year:

We’re getting back to Starbucks. We’re refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart — a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas. This is our enduring identity. We will innovate from here.

He’s trying to make service faster, especially if you’re just getting drip coffee. He’s switching up the cups, serving iced drinks in real glasses and offering refills if you’re getting it to stay. He hopes you stay: He wants Starbucks to retake its status as a “third place,” that semi-mythical public social space where, these days, people are more likely to just be working on their laptops as ~building community~. You can have a third place, as long as you buy something: Niccol reversed a longtime policy that visitors could stay in a cafe even without making a purchase.

Starbucks baristas are now supposed to be as friendly as the legendarily flirty Trader Joe’s cashiers, though their affection comes in the form of personalized messages written on the cups waiting for customers on the counter. “Enjoy,” one reads. The scrawled-on cups have, probably intentionally, created a content renaissance. TikTok is awash in elaborate Starbucks cups, like this excerpt from The Notebook:

Others etch the cup with TikTok memes, Taylor Swift lyrics, or sparkly stars.

It certainly creates more labor for the staff, but it’s fun, and it makes the experience more personal on both sides. Baristas can express themselves, customers can enjoy some brief spark of novelty, and everyone can post them online for clout. Social media is the real winner. But I’m looking forward to seeing how else Niccol rehabs the coffee shop’s image. If anything, it makes me nostalgic for a time that Starbucks meant something more to me than just roadtrip caffeine.

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Best of One Thing

Look back through the archives for OT’s greatest hits. We send out short newsletters on taste, authenticity, and recommendation culture every Tuesday and Thursday.

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