This segment from the Omni Talk Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, and Quorso, examines Starbucks' deployment of computer vision technology to track inventory and improve order fulfillment. Chris and Anne discuss how this addresses the chain's persistent speed and stock-out challenges.

• 15:28 – Computer vision deployment across North America 
• 17:17 – The four-minute order fulfillment challenge 
• 18:07 – Reliability as Starbucks' core value proposition

For the full #fastfive episode head here: https://youtu.be/xSLvyg5Sze4

#starbucks #computervision #AI #inventory #efficiency

Starbucks is deploying computer vision technology to help the chain track its in store stock and possibly even to automate some ordering.

According to Supply Chain Dive, the tech developed in conjunction with Nomad Go, is currently live.

Yeah, Nomad Go, it's a great name.

Yeah.

It's currently live across thousands of coffee houses and will be in use across the chain's entire North American company operated store system by the end of September, according to Deb Haul.

Lefebvre.

I'm going to go with Lefebvre.

This is my favorite name of any name.

It's like, it's like Brett Favreau.

Yeah.

In Something about Mary.

Yeah, I know you mentioned that.

Yeah, like how do you.

Yeah, well, Debfevre.

Deb, you know how to get in touch with us.

She is Starbucks chief technology officers and she says that in cafes using the artificial intelligence systems, quote, inventory is now counted eight times more frequently, giving us real time visibility and enabling faster, more precise replenishment.

End quote.

A publicity video shared with the announcement shows workers scanning fridges and stock rooms with the cameras on store tablets which automatically tabulate the amount and type of ingredients on hand.

Chris, are you for or against Starbucks experimenting with computer vision to help track store inventory?

Oh, I'm 100% for this, yeah.

100.

Explain why.

Well, it's very simple and because Starbucks needs to find a way to free up its stack to actually fill orders.

Right.

And so if they're gonna try to experiment with this through the future of automated ordering.

Yeah, I'm all in.

Because the most telling statistic to me in the article was actually buried at the end.

I'm guessing you saw it too, where they talked about how Starbucks recently revealed that they're testing something called the smart queue ordering sequencing platform, which is hard to say.

The smart queue ordering sequencing platform.

And here's what Nicol Brian Nichols, the CEO of Starbucks said and I wanna make sure I get this right, so I'm gonna read it out loud.

So he said, quote, since testing the algorithm, it has driven, quote, a double digit improvement in cafe orders handed off in under four minutes, with 80% of in cafe orders now meeting that target, end quote, where the algorithm is being tested.

Okay, so think about what that statement means.

And that means that 20% of the orders, yes, where this is showing a massive improvement, are still not meeting the customer service expectation of under four minutes.

That's ridiculous.

That means you have a massive problem and you have no idea what the dispersion of that is either.

I mean, I've been putting my orders in.

It's taken a long time, many, many times.

So that is just crazy to me.

And so yes, anything that possibly chips away at that will frees up employees to make coffees more quickly.

All in.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree it's not automated coffee makers yet, which I would still like to see.

But like you said, anything that frees up time for the barist to be more focused on getting in front of customers and making coffee more quickly, the better.

The second part of this is I didn't realize what a problem Starbucks had with out of stocks until this article and started going into that.

I've never actually encountered that.

That to me is a huge problem because when I think about the future success of Starbucks, it's not whether or not there's a coffee house that I can sit in and work or not.

Starbucks is sold 100% on reliability.

The reliability that whether I'm in Beijing or Boston, I can get exactly the same drink that I am expecting every single time.

And if they don't have the products in stock, I'm gonna stop going to Starbucks for that.

Like I'm.

Has that ever happened to you though?

Yes, for sure.

Really?

Oat milk is out of stock or like I like a vanilla bean powder and that's.

There's like a lot of instances or food, other things too, like where those products are not in stock.

And I think if, if you can't hit on reliably reliability Starbucks, that's where you're going to start losing people to the other local coffee houses or to somewhere else where they are having a better experience or they're getting that fast coffee that they want or the coffee house experience that they want.

So to me, you know, before mobile orders, before coffee house experience enhancements, you have to make sure that this is in your products are in stock and people can get what they're looking for when they go to you.

That's it.

I never thought about that.

I've never actually had that experience.

But I also.

But the other side of the coin too is like there's actually the efficiency of the inventory from deploying tools like this too, which frees up your working capital, then potentially put it back into store labor as well.

So there's that side of it as well.

So either way it seems like a win, win.