Looks like the Siren is back on the reusable cup beat.
This past week, Starbucks announced that it will accept refillable personal cups for drive-thru and mobile app orders while claiming they’re the first national chain to do so.
Customers can select “personal cup” as a customization option when ordering through the app. When placing a drive-thru order, they tell the barista they’ve brought their own cup, while customers in the cafe hand over their personal cups when ordering or can request their beverage served in a ceramic or glass cup.
“At Starbucks, we envision a future where every beverage can be served in a reusable cup,” Michael Kobori, Starbucks chief sustainability officer, said in the announcement. “Offering customers more options to use a personal cup when they visit Starbucks marks tangible progress towards the future. We know our customers are passionate about the planet, and now, they can join us in our efforts to give more than we take, no matter how they order.”
Starbucks has offered a 10-cent discount and a 25-star bonus to the customer’s rewards account for bringing in a reusable cup for some time but has limited the option to in-store orders. The COVID pandemic also halted Starbucks’ reusable cup program entirely, with the chain resuming the program later.
Not that most customers would have noticed. Starbucks says less than 1% of orders utilize reusable cups.
For mobile and drive-thru orders, baristas prepare the order in a reusable container, minus any finishing toppings like cold foam (a popular add-on). The barista then takes the customer’s cup, which must be clean, holds it in a separate holding vessel, pours the prepared drink from the reusable container, tops the beverage, and hands it back in the same holding vessel.
If it sounds like this will make the wait for your morning Starbies longer, you aren’t alone.
While Starbucks says this will reduce single-use waste, store-level partners (Starbucks’ term for employees) don’t seem convinced it will reduce plastic and decrease the speed of service. Several Starbucks baristas have already expressed flaws in the system, such as abuse of the discount and star rewards in the app, where the customer chooses the option but doesn’t bring in their own cup, and a slowdown in service. Finally, baristas will have to use single-use cups anyway if it proves popular because they only get two reusable containers per store.
The Seattle-based chain has trialed other programs that seem less operationally complex for baristas in the past. On more than one occasion, Starbucks has piloted “rent-a-cup” programs where patrons pay a nominal deposit for a reusable cup. Small, independent cafes, like several in Portland, are joining forces via facilitators like Okapi, so surely a global chain like Starbucks can make it work. It would require fewer steps when preparing drinks. However, having customers bring their cups saves Starbucks the cost of collecting, washing, and sanitizing the rentable cups.
Anyone who’s ordered Starbucks in a drive-thru, on the app, or worse, for delivery, knows that these systems aren’t really designed for personal cups. Let’s face it—customers want their orders fast. Adding extra steps with a patron’s cup, especially given the complexity of some people’s Starbucks orders (looking at you, Becky), will slow down the whole flow of orders.
A rent-a-cup program would likely be better. Customers don’t have to worry about remembering to clean and bring their personal cups. The cups are standard-sized, making it easier for baristas to make drinks, especially on drive-thru and for mobile orders. What’s more, a nominal deposit isn’t a significant barrier to adoption, and customers can return cups to one of literally thousands of locations. The only downside is to Starbucks, who would be responsible for the program and its costs. But shouldn’t the Siren be the one to bear the burden of genuinely reducing single-use cup use, not the customer or already beleaguered baristas? If Seattle is serious about serving every drink in a reusable cup, then it should put its money where its mouth is.
The update to Starbucks’ reusable cup program comes amidst a prolonged union-busting effort and a TikTok-driven boycott against the company related to the Israel-Gaza war. Sustainability might not be a focus for the brand at the moment.
But maybe we should take the Siren at its word; it cares about reducing single-use cups. But is it intentionally or not sabotaging its efforts by creating a complicated personal cup program through mobile and drive-thru, particularly when store-level staff have expressed how difficult it will be to implement, and they’ve already trialed rental cups, which would be much easier to integrate into current operational flows? I won’t say it’s intentional greenwashing, but it feels like a half-baked sustainability initiative that wasn’t thought through.
Baristas, the folks Starbucks calls “partners,” have pointed out the faults, but it doesn’t seem like the company is listening.
Images courtesy of Starbucks.