Photo: Starbucks
Will Americans Embrace Reusable Coffee Cups?
Starbucks on Wednesday became the first national coffee chain to give customers the option to use reusable cups for drive-thru and mobile orders.
The move means reusable coffee cups will be largely available regardless of how customers order at Starbucks’ North American locations. Since 1985, customers have been able to use their own clean, personal cups when ordering in person at most Starbucks locations.
The move comes as Starbucks has increasingly faced hurdles in fulfilling its goal of reducing its waste footprint by 50% by 2030, as drive-thru and app orders together have grown to account for about 70% of sales at company-operated U.S. stores. Both options leapfrogged in popularity since the pandemic.
Single-use cups account for 20% of the chain’s global waste. Paper cups supporting hot drinks require plastic linings to prevent leakage, making them hard to recycle. For years now, Greenpeace has pushed Starbucks to abandon disposable cups altogether.
Starbucks said in its press release, “This is part of a larger cultural movement the company is leading to shift toward reusables and away from single-use plastics, making it convenient for customers to use their own personal cup for every visit.”
For customers, the eco-friendly push carries some inconveniences. Personal cups must be cleaned before bringing them to locations, as baristas won’t rinse them out. The chain also won’t accept cups larger than 40 ounces.
Under the new process:
- For drive-thru orders, customers tell the barista during the ordering process that they’ve brought their own mug. For app orders, a new “personal cup” option has been added to the “customization” button during the ordering process.
- Baristas then make the drink in a separate custom container that has “standardized lines” baristas need for measurements.
- At the pickup window, baristas collect customers’ personal cups without the lids using a contactless vessel to ensure hygiene and safety. They then pour the drink from the custom container into the personal cup and return the beverage in the contactless vessel.
Like how the process has worked for walk-ins, customers receive a 10-cent discount every time they use a personal cup as well as 25 stars for Starbucks’ rewards members.
Customers choosing to sit and stay in the café can also request a reusable ceramic or glass cup at most stores.
With this “milestone” move, Starbucks must be careful not to put additional pressure on baristas already tasked with speeding through complicated, customized orders. The chain has battled both labor-related boycotts and unionization pushes.
Skeptics may also question the net environmental benefit given the emission damage of cars idling in drive-thru lanes. Starbucks told Axios that “overall drive-thru times were not negatively impacted” in its test of personal cups at 200 Colorado stores last spring.
Discussion Questions
Does Starbucks’ program enabling reusable cups to be used at the drive-thru and for mobile orders work for customers, baristas, and environmental advocates? Where do you see flaws or potential hurdles with the initiative?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Brian Cluster
Director of Industry Strategy - CPG & Retail, Stibo Systems
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
It’s great to give customers the choice to use personal cups at the drive-thru or for mobile orders, and it is probably good for the environment too. However, it really does sound like a bit of a faff to have to make a drink and then to pour it into another container. Fine for drinks that are mixed, but what about those with things like cream on top, etc.? How does that work? Starbucks workers are already under a lot of pressure with the rise of customized drinks, so I hope this doesn’t add yet more complexity into their processes.
It’s kinda stupid, since the current cups are biodegradable (except for Frappucino cups)
I suppose there is some energy/resource saving on having to make new cups. However, the operational side does not seem to have been thought through at all!
We may not be able to put
menpeople on the Moon any more – tho we all have candidates we’d like put there! – but still Giant Steps. OK. OK sarcasm aside: is this an idea worth trying ? Sure. Will it be without problems? No. What happens when a customer shows up with her/his 32oz ‘BigGulp’ and claims “I wuz robbed!” when it isn’t filled up ? Or some hapless barista drops a $2000 17thC Ottoman cup on the ground? Good intentions aside, any time you take a highly standardized process and try to customize it you invite problems (and they usually show up)I’ll try to use this one. Less plastic and cardboard waste- like that, an extra 25 stars (worth roughly 1/4 of a cup of coffee) sure. Now if I can just remember to take my reuseable cup out of my reusable shopping bag and actually bring it into the store – life will be great.
It’s impossible for Starbucks to fully solve for interest: baristas, customers and environmentalists alike. Still, Starbucks is making the effort and that’s what counts for now.
While there are contactless measures in place (the vessel) to minimize barista contact with customer cups, it’s unclear what kind of sanitization methods are in place for the vessel holding multiple customer cups.
Further, what happens when the mixing cup comes in contact with personal customer cups when pouring? Does this add time for additional sanitation for already rushed baristas?
This scrunity is from the eye of the ‘moderate’ germaphobe and may contribute to some customers reluctant to use personal cups – even if they see the environmental benefit. Overtime, customers may become more comfortable with BYOC (bring your own cup), especially with local awareness, incentives and demonstrated hygiene practices.
Again, it’s unlikely Starbucks will fully solve for every interest (moderate germsphobes aside) but the fact that they are taking steps to minimize their environmental footprint is its own worthy accolade.
Back in the day, I used to bring my favorite coffee mug to the Starbucks across the street (daily and always clean. Then they closed that Starbucks and opened two more. One was three blocks to the north. The other was four blocks to the south. With that slight change in location, bringing my own cup became something I no longer wanted to deal with.
I applaud Starbucks for its environmental effort. I am sure a niche of users will take advantage of what seems to me a Rube Goldberg process.
I applaud Starbucks for trying to lead on this one and adopting some of the pandemic health related learnings as well. To the consumer, this is similar to single use plastic bags for shopping. It’s a habit change but can have an impact individually not only at Starbucks but across the industry.
The potential problem is the double pouring required using their own container then pouring into the customers’ cup. Starbucks has provided good incentives for this program and hopefully they can work out any minor operational challenges to make this successful.
It’s too bad our coffee culture is so different from Europe where a real cup is used and the coffee is consumed at the coffee bar. Given that so much of our daily lives revolve around to-go food and drinks, this is a giant step that Starbucks is taking and is about time they did.
Nice idea. I can’t tell if I’m the norm or the outlier, but I very rarely bring re-usable bags to the grocery store, so it’s hard for me to imagine using re-usable cups. I hope I’m an outlier.
There has to be a potential shrink issue in there as well…but it’s likely smaller. When I was young, I used to sell beer for charity at football games. Sales were determined by counting cups. The easy way out was to ask people to bring their cups back.
I have adopted reusable cups and that means that as a statistically significant sample size of one, America will also adopt reusable cups at Starbucks. I bought their $2 plastic cups when they first came out and used them religiously for my $.10 savings (per drink). I think I bought my first company using those savings. I also keep sleeves and trays and reuse those. It just makes sense. One of the key challenges will be the effect on Starbucks’ “speed of service.” I feel that the phenomenal operation that had been nearly perfect in delivering hot and cold drinks of high quality at lighting speeds has suffered a little in recent years (in both quality and speed). I think this will add a complexity that will further strain that operation but, in my Baristas I Trust (they’re super human). My cups have been sitting idle for some time because my primary method of ordering has been mobile and the reusable cup option hasn’t been available for mobile ordering. I’m excited to dust off my reusable cups, including the holiday themed ones!
Starbucks reusable cup program shows thoughtful consideration for different stakeholder groups.
Here’s the impact on different groups:
Given that drive-thru and mobile account for 70% of sales, it makes sense for Starbucks to seek process improvements for sustainability.
Before this decision, speed of service in the Drive Thru was average. I can’t believe it will be any better with this new addition. Chick fil A has done an amazing job of streamlining every detail of their DT process and it’s about the fastest experience of any coffee/fast food restaurant in the US. I know the chains are different, but DT operations are similar, and instead of adding more layers of complexity into the process, Starbuck’s should take a page from CFA and simplify.
I applaud Starbucks for attempting to address environmental issues within its business model. My concerns are primarily operational. Is the barista responsible for determining which mugs are clean enough to be reused? What happens if the mug is not clean enough? How do you handle throughput and customer satisfaction issues when a mug is turned away? The strategy is excellent, but I am worried that the devil is in the details of this somewhat ambitious effort.
I love this idea! So much waste in those coffee and tea orders! I know, because we save our throw away cups and reuse them at home (I know a little OCD but still).
I have two “gotchas” though–how in the world would this work with a mobile order??? I mean, the whole point of a mobile order is your drink is ready when you get there….so in the future you order on your phone, walk in with your reusable cup and…what? Oh-ask them to make the drink you preordered. Similar issue with the drive through lane…you order, and then you get to the window and hand the barista your cup…and wait….while everyone who does not care about waste glares at you while they wait for your drink to be made.
Not seeing it. Or, maybe this could be the start of some kind of “slow down you move too fast” movement, with everyone going to Starbucks with their reusable cups being happy about waiting…
Sustainability is important to many customers, especially GenZ and Millennials. Our annual customer service and CX research found that 43% of customers said a company/brand supporting a cause was important to them. Only 24% don’t care. Starbucks has chosen sustainability as a cause that uses reusable cups. It will take a little extra effort (drive-through windows and pre-orders), as they have to wait for a customer to give them their cup or mug. I believe customers will tolerate this minimal extra time in exchange for Starbucks’s effort to help the environment.
Let’s look at the numbers before we praise this program. With the exception of the pandemic, Starbuck’s has been accepting personal cups for ~39 years now but despite the fact that it sells literally millions of cups of coffee in the US every day I have never been in a Starbuck’s where I’ve seen a line of cup bearing customers. After almost four decades you’d think you might see a few more cups. Also, there is the niggling problem that 72% of today’s US Starbuck’s orders come through the drive-in or mobile app, so that means that almost three quarters of over four million cups a day either have to be dealt with somehow. Double poring from urn to pot to cup will significantly slow down the drive up business and presumably that method doesn’t even begin to address any of the mobile order business. One more thing. The article states that Starbuck’s cups are “hard” to recycle. Where I live they can’t be recycled, so it isn’t hard, it’s impossible. Not to be cynical but it seems that somebody at Starbuck’s headquarters woke up to the fact that there environmental goals were … well … let’s just say a bit overly optimistic. So, in short, the new program will slow down the drive throughs, not address the mobile order issue, if successful create more work for basistas who will now have lots and lots of cups to wash on top of their normal instore duties, and is guaranteed to frustrate environmentalists. Probably would have been smarter to use those nearly 40 years to develop a recyclable disposable cup that didn’t leak.
I think the desire is there but the logistics- for both customers and baristas – is not.
Starbucks own research from its test market indicates that fewer than 1% of customer orders will be served in personal cups. The test market was in Colorado, a very environmentally friendly state, but 99% of their consumers said no thank you to personal cups. And that might be a blessing.
Sometimes our society institutes environmental policies without full regard to much broader consequences, effects, true cost, and environmental contradictions. But let’s focus on the pragmatic issues.
Starbucks workers insist the policy is unfeasible, and I agree with them. If for no other reason, the timing is not good because stores are understaffed. It will be nearly impossible for employees to learn a new process and keep up with it on top of having an employee shortage.
The whole point of a drive-thru is to order ahead of time and have your drink ready when you get to the window. But with Starbucks’ new policy, customers with a reusable cup won’t have their drink poured until they get to the window, potentially adding wait time to a service model that relies on efficiency. The drive-thru lines will slow down to a crawl.
Will Starbucks hold employees responsible for personal cups’ cleanliness before pouring drinks? Workers can’t sanitize the cups themselves, per the policy, so they’ll have to assess whether the cup is clean enough to use. That will no doubt cause conflict with customers.