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Are Americans losing their taste for Starbucks? “The whole concept got old,” one customer said.
Americans are addicted to caffeine but not to Starbucks, it seems.
When Chicago writer Natalia Nebel steps out for an espresso, for instance, Starbucks no longer comes to mind, even though she lives within walking distance to two of the coffee chain’s more than 17,000 U.S. stores.
“I used to go all the time and now I don’t go anymore,” said Nebel, 61, recalling her pre-COVID routine of setting up shop four days a week at a local Starbucks, finding it an enjoyable change of scenery and a comfortable spot to work. “I liked being around people in a different setting,” Nebel told CBS MoneyWatch.
But Starbucks’ appeal for Nebel faded along with the pandemic. “Once I stopped going, I didn’t really miss it,” she said, noting that she prefers the ambiance of the independent cafes in her Lincoln Park neighborhood.
“The whole concept got old. Starbucks started really feeling like corporate America in a way it hadn’t before,” she added.
Delaware resident Troy Turner also sees benefits to brewing at home, saying it’s relatively easy, quick and far less expensive to make “significantly better coffee than anything you’d get at Starbucks.”
The home barista community has gained traction online, with tutorials available on making coffee, noted Turner, 29, a leave and disability examiner who lives in Dover.
“A few years ago, when I was first getting into coffee, I was on the fence about Starbucks versus Dunkin’ doughnuts, but I quickly got out of attending both places,” said Turner, a self-described coffee enthusiast.
Rare drop in sales
Nebel and Turner are not alone in forging a life without Starbucks, at least if the company’s latest earnings report is any guide.
The biggest coffee chain on the planet is losing ground with people around the globe, its first drop in quarterly revenue since 2020 recently showed. The slowdown in store traffic was particularly acute in the U.S., with same-store sales down 3% in the January through March period from a year ago.
Budget-conscious consumers are shelling out less on quick-service offerings, and that includes Starbucks, according to CEO Laxman Narasimhan.
“We continue to feel the impact of a more cautious consumer,” he said on an earnings call last week.
“Many customers have been more exacting about where and how they choose to spend their money, particularly with stimulus savings mostly spent,” Narasimhan said. “We saw this materialize over the quarter as customers made the trade-offs, but being food away from home and food at home.”
The company’s plan to turn things around includes updating its app and mobile payment offerings, speeding up service, and overhauling its menu to lure customers back, he said.
“The consumer is starting to feel the bite of tighter finances, and Starbucks is one of those indulgent luxuries that people can easily cut out,” said Neal Saunders, managing director, retail, at GlobalData.
Schultz calls for “maniacal focus”
The financial setback last quarter also prompted some unsolicited advice from former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who led the company for decades as it expanded around the globe.
“The stores require a maniacal focus on the customer experience, through the eyes of a merchant. The answer does not lie in data, but in the stores,” Schultz wrote on his LinkedIn account on Monday. Starbucks should revamp its mobile ordering and payment app to “once again make it the uplifting experience it was designed to be,” suggested Schultz, who finished his third stint as CEO early last year but remains one of the company’s biggest shareholders.
According to Schultz, Starbucks will recover, but it’s “clearly not business as usual.”
“We always appreciate Howard’s perspective. The challenges and opportunities he highlights are the ones we are focused on. And like Howard, we are confident in Starbucks long-term success,” a Starbucks spokesperson said in response to Schultz’s remarks.
The “customer experience flags in a world where seamless mobile/digital ordering and throughput are emphasized,” Sean Dunlop, an analyst at MorningStar, said. “If baristas are constantly operating at 100% capacity, it’s challenging to snap out of that and ensure that a customer’s having a really unique experience — they simply don’t have the bandwidth,” Dunlop said.
If one looks at the long history of Starbucks, the brand in its early days was very much an experiential occasion, with consumers “going in, ordering a beverage just the way they wanted it and having a nice interaction with the barista, a nice feel-good experience,” said David Tarantino, an analyst at Robert W. Baird. “One of the downsides of mobile ordering is it becomes very transactional.”
Labor strike turns off some customers
Both Nebel and Turner mentioned Starbucks’ strife with employees as another reason they choose not to patronize the business, although most analysts downplayed the issue.
From Nebel’s perspective, a Starbucks cafe in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood that used to bustle with energy and people now has fewer patrons and a downbeat atmosphere. “I don’t know that the employees seem that happy there, and maybe you pick up on it, too,” she said.
Starbucks and the union organizing its workers are currently in contract negotiations after a protracted battle that has the Supreme Court hearing its case challenging the authority of the National Labor Relations Board.
“It’s not implausible to surmise that the occasional consumer or a consumer with less affinity for Starbucks in general might shift a couple of visits, at the margin, away from the brand if they found labor practices particularly distasteful,” said Dunlop at MorningStar. “The great irony there, of course, is that Starbucks offers one of the best employee value propositions (wages and benefits) in the restaurant industry, so they’re being punished for labor practices that most folks partake in.”
Meanwhile, headlines about Starbucks employees not being allowed to wear Black Lives Matter attire tarnished the brand for Morgan Bissett-Tessier, a 31-year-old law school student and part-time school administrator in New York. The Brooklyn resident now avoids Starbucks despite the company reversing its dress code policy on BLM.
Starbucks “was never a regular thing for me because it was expensive, so it was a treat,” Bissett-Tessier said. “Now it doesn’t feel worth it.”
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What started out as a college romance ended in murder and mystery.
1994 – Scott Peterson and Laci Rocha met in 1994 while both were attending college at California Polytechnic State University. They married two years later. In 2002, Laci became pregnant. The two lived in Modesto, California and planned to raise their unborn son Conner there.
Laci Peterson Missing
December 24, 2002 – Scott Peterson says that on Christmas Eve morning, he left his pregnant wife alone to go fishing about 90 miles away at the Berkeley Marina. He says that Laci planned to walk the couple’s dog, McKenzie, and mop the kitchen floor. When Scott returned home hours later, he says he found McKenzie there alone, still wearing a leash – but no sign of Laci. That evening, Laci’s stepfather called the police to report her missing.
Searching for Laci
Family, friends, and volunteers launched a huge search for Laci Peterson.
Scott Peterson was interviewed by police in the early hours of Christmas Day. Now-retired Modesto Police Detective Jon Buehler says Scott didn’t seem as interested as one would expect. “Oftentimes, a victim who’s left behind is firing tons of questions at us … And we didn’t get any of that from him,” Buehler told “48 Hours.”
Amber Frey
December 30, 2002 – Less than a week after Laci Peterson went missing, Modesto detectives raced over to investigate an intriguing lead: a Fresno massage therapist named Amber Frey revealed that she had been dating Scott Peterson for over a month. She told police that Peterson had lied to her and said he was single.
Secret Recordings
Former Detective Buehler notes, “Her recall was fantastic. It was almost like it was a script from a Hallmark TV show or something.” Amber Frey recalled every detail of their romantic dates, down to what they were wearing. Hoping for clues that might lead them to the missing woman, detectives ask Frey to record phone calls between her and Scott Peterson, and she agrees.
Affair Revealed
January 24, 2003 – In an explosive press conference one month after Laci Peterson goes missing, Amber Frey publicly reveals her affair with Scott Peterson. “I am very sorry for Laci’s family and the pain that this has caused them,” she said. “And I pray for her safe return, as well.”
Prior to Frey going public, Peterson had told her in a recorded call that he was in Paris when he was really in Modesto while the search for Laci was still on. Eventually Scott admitted to her, “I’ve lied to you that I’ve been traveling.” Those recorded calls would later become part of a damning case against Peterson.
Bodies Found
April 13 and 14, 2003 – Two bodies are found on the shores of the San Francisco Bay. They are later identified as Laci Peterson and her unborn child. The two bodies were found about a mile apart.
Scott Peterson Arrested
April 18, 2003 – Authorities caught up with Scott Peterson at a golf course in San Diego and arrested him. Authorities found a wad of cash, his brother’s ID card, and multiple cell phones inside the vehicle. Days later, Peterson pleaded not guilty to two counts of capital murder.
Trial and Error
June 1, 2004 – Scott Peterson’s trial begins in San Mateo County, California. Because of massive publicity the trial was moved from Modesto to Redwood City, in San Mateo County. The decision was made because the judge decided it would be difficult for Peterson to get a fair trial too close to home, where emotions were running high.
High Suspicions
August 10, 2004 – In what many consider a major turning point of the trial, Amber Frey took the stand for the first time to tell the jury about her relationship with Scott Peterson, a secretly married man, and about all the lies he told her. Frey painted a picture of a dishonest man who could tell falsehoods with ease, hurting his credibility.
Jurors heard the lies for themselves in those recorded phone calls Frey made.
Justice for Laci and Conner
November 12, 2004 – Scott Peterson was found guilty of first-degree murder for the death of his wife Laci and second-degree murder for the death of his unborn son Conner. Crowds outside cheer.
Peterson Jurors
March 16, 2005 – Four months after his conviction, Scott Peterson is sentenced to death. At a press conference, Juror No. 7, Richelle Nice, [pictured center] called Peterson a “jerk” and commented “San Quentin is your new home,” referring to the prison where he would serve his sentence. Nice was nicknamed “Strawberry Shortcake” during the trial because of her hair color.
Death Sentence Overturned
August 24, 2020 – After two appeals, Scott Peterson’s death sentence was overturned by the California Supreme Court after deciding that the original trial judge made a mistake when jurors were being picked for trial. The result of that mistake, Peterson’s supporters say, was that the jury was stacked with pro death penalty jurors. Peterson, shown here in 2018, will now receive a new trial for only the sentence phase.
The court upheld his murder convictions.
Juror No. 7
October 14, 2020 – The California Supreme Court orders a lower court to reexamine Peterson’s murder convictions and decide if he should get an entire new trial. Scott Peterson’s supporters say it all comes down to the actions of that juror once nicknamed “Strawberry Shortcake” – Richelle Nice, pictured here in 2005.
During jury selection, prospective jurors filled out a questionnaire asking if they had in the past been in a lawsuit and if they had been crime victims. Nice checked no. “It’s pretty clear… that she lied to us straight to our face about her own situation,” Peterson’s current attorney Pat Harris told “48 Hours.” In fact, Nice was involved in two domestic disputes in the past. But prosecutors say when Nice filled out that questionnaire she didn’t lie, she just didn’t think her past experiences were relevant to the questions and didn’t see herself as a victim. Now a lower court will consider if Peterson will get a complete retrial. Richelle Nice declined to speak with “48 Hours.”
New Evidence?
March 7, 2021 – CBS News’ Jonathan Vigliotti interviewed Scott Peterson’s sister-in-law Janey Peterson in her “war room” of evidence she claims proves his innocence. She claims witnesses saw Laci walking in the neighborhood near the Peterson home after the time Scott said he left for the fishing trip. If that’s true, Scott couldn’t have killed Laci.
Scott Peterson’s attorney explains, “there’s been a lot of criticism because we didn’t call some witnesses who saw Laci that day,” and that the thought process at the time was that “a number of the witnesses who saw her didn’t have great – memories or had contra – were contradicting each other.”
Retired detective Jon Buehler says there are no witnesses who saw Laci alive that morning. He says there were other young women in the neighborhood who were pregnant and looked similar to Laci, and that “it would be real easy for somebody to mistakenly see one of those three girls as being Laci.” Still, Janey Peterson insists that Scott is innocent.
A Burglary
Perhaps more important to a new defense case is what Janey Peterson believes actually happened to Laci. She points to a burglary she believes happened on the same day Laci disappeared, right across the street from the Peterson home. Scott Peterson’s supporters theorize that Laci confronted the burglars and that ended badly. But police quickly arrested the burglars – Steven Todd and Donald Pearce – pictured here in a 2003 Modesto Police Department press release.
Awaiting a Decision
April 27, 2021 – Scott Peterson appeared in court remotely for a status hearing on a new death penalty trial.
Dec. 8, 2021: Scott Peterson was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the deaths of his wife and unborn child.
2024: The Los Angeles Innocence Project took up Peterson’s fight for a new trial. Since then, a California judge has granted his defense team access to previously undisclosed evidence as well as permission to do additional DNA testing.
Peterson and his supporters maintain the wrong man is in prison for Laci and Conner’s deaths. According to Detective Buehler, “Well, I guess it’s possible. But you know, there’s still people that believe the Earth is flat too.”
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