Monday, August 22, 2005

Starbucks in Dundrum Update

Yeah I know its sad, but I have another Starbucks related post. I went up to Dundrum on Saturday to get some stuff from Tescos and decided to go to Starbucks for lunch. Of course there was a queue out the door which I thought was caused by first weekend novelty. Instead it was caused by poor service and chaos behind the counter. It was taking about 3 to 4 minutes to serve some people. I know Starbucks take pride in their complicated ordering system, but even ordering a Venti Latte to take away took a couple of minutes.

There were 8 staff behind the counter, 2 were manning the tills, 1 was making coffee, 1 was making paninis and the others were getting in the way. 2 others were clearing tables, and at one stage 5!!! were outside handing out instruction leaflets and taking photos of themselves in their Starbucks uniforms standing in the queue, they thought the queue was very funny. The 2 at the tills were easily distracted spending time talking and watching the others behind the counter, even while serving customers. They also didn't understand the menu and people were resorting to pointing to items on the boards behind them to explain what they wanted. 1 person was making coffees and while busy, she was not swamped as the customers were not making it through the tills.

As proof that it wasn't the number of customers that caused the problem I counted 10 empty tables, which was about half the total. After all their preparation you would think they could have trained their staff? Also, considering a Venti Latte is €3.70 I'd expect decent customer service.

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