Starbucks Is Changing How You Order Your Drinks

In the last few months, and amidst its release of The Devil Wears Prada 2-themed drinks, it’s felt like Starbucks has been on a mission to totally revamp its ordering processes, in a bid to keep up with both the modern pace of life and new technologies. Its ordering system has never been that slow to begin with, but the chain has started rolling out ways to speed it up even further and (it hopes) make things easier for its customers: Last week, for instance, we reported on Starbucks’ new ChatGPT app, which may well prove to be fairly polarizing as it continues to be rolled out.

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Now, it’s doing it again. Starbucks has just announced that it’ll be rolling out a schedule-ahead feature nationwide, allowing you to put in your coffee order well ahead of time. Here’s what you need to know.

Pick Your Time, Pick Up Your Coffee

Starbucks told People that it will be launching new scheduled ordering in its coffeehouses across the country from May 11. Customers will now be able to place their coffee order up to an hour before their desired pick-up time through the Starbucks app, picking from various five-minute windows. “It’s perfect for moments that require a bit more planning, so you can schedule ahead around meetings, classes or busy days,” said the chain in a statement to People, and we can definitely see how it’d be a bit of a time-saver – although the five-minute window approach does give the baristas making the coffee a degree of flexibility.

This isn’t actually a totally new system for Starbucks: It tested it out at select locations last year. When the pilot scheme was revealed, it was received well by Starbucks regulars. “As a customer I love this,” said one person on Reddit, responding to the trial. “My current mobile order options are to order from home and then spend 30 minutes getting to the store, or to order from the parking lot. I would never expect it to be ready at an exact time but having a window of time to pick up would be helpful.”

So…Everyone’s Happy?

Well, because scheduled ordering has yet to go live everywhere, it’s hard to tell exactly how it will go down. However, it’s fair to say that the baristas and Starbucks employees who weighed in when the pilot scheme was announced weren’t all huge fans. Multiple people pointed out that orders will likely be heavily weighted towards certain timeslots, creating a bottleneck for orders (and, subsequently, more stress). Others, though, did note that Starbucks is a little bit behind the times on this system, and plenty of other fast food chains have introduced scheduled ordering – so it’s kinda overdue. 

The full impact of scheduled ordering, though, remains to be seen, as do Starbucks’ other recent changes, like to its tipping, which have stoked discussion about how much the chain values its staff. We’ll be keeping an eye on the full response.