Sasha Rogelberg
4 min read
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As Starbucks continues its “get back to Starbucks” plan to revive slumping sales, the company announced it will implement an OpenAI-powered chatbot to remind baristas of drink recipes and assist them with equipment troubleshooting. Analysts told Fortune the move could help streamline hiring and efficiency, but it also carries with it the pitfalls of AI, including the potential for hallucinations and outages.
Starbucks is betting on AI to give its baristas some extra help behind the counter.
The Seattle-based coffee chain announced Tuesday the launch of “Green Dot Assist,” an AI-powered virtual assistant intended to simplify baristas’ jobs and fulfill orders faster. Starbucks will pilot the technology created with Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI platform at 35 locations and will roll it out nationwide next year.
The AI assistant will pull recipe cards of drinks to show baristas how to make them, as well as suggesting swaps if ingredients run out, the company said. The tech will also suggest food pairings to suggest to customers, provide troubleshooting support for malfunctioning equipment, and help managers find employees to backfill shifts should a store be short-staffed.
“It’s just another example of how innovation technology is coming into service of our partners and making sure that we’re doing all we can to simplify the operations, make their jobs just a little bit easier—maybe a little bit more fun—so that they can do what they do best,” Starbucks chief technology officer Deb Hall Lefevre told CNBC.
Starbucks first announced the tech at its Leadership Experience event on Tuesday, when it also unveiled plans to expand the position of assistant manager by adding the role to “most company-operated stores in the U.S,” hiring about 90% of management internally.
The swath of labor changes are the latest in CEO Brian Niccol’s efforts for the company to “get back to Starbucks” and revive its cozy-coffeehouse reputation amid slumping sales. The company reported in April its fourth straight quarter of same-store sales declines, in part a result of economic uncertainty putting a damper on demand.
As part of the turnaround efforts, Starbucks will have to draw on its big brand name and past goodwill from customers to refocus on what made the chain popular to begin with.
“All brands drift over time, and I have pattern recognition,” Starbucks CFO Cathy Smith told Fortune in April. “I’ve seen this with a number of brands, and the great ones recapture what made them great.”
The move follows the lead of other restaurant chains deploying AI. Yum! Brands, the conglomerate behind KFC and Taco Bell, has partnered with Nvidia to take drive-thru and digital orders. McDonald’s, however, cancelled its contract with IBM after two years and returned humans to drive-thru order-taking.
