Retail

Dear Howard Schultz, You Have Buzzards (Real Ones) in Your Parking Lot

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: January 3, 2016 9:06 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 3:30 pm

The Starbucks at the Wellington Mall in Wellington, Fla., has vultures in its parking lot. They are real ones, at least according to pictures in the “Audubon’s Birds of America.” The employees don’t seem to care. The vultures aren’t their problem, they say.

Howard Schultz, the founder and CEO of Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX), can’t be everywhere at once.

The vultures-in-the-parking-lot problem shows how difficult quality control is for companies with large numbers of outlets, be they fast food or retail chains. Starbucks has nearly 24,000 locations. Its quality control apparatus has to stretch beyond the U.S. to countries which include India, Peru, and Taiwan. Who knows what kinds of quality problems Starbucks faces in its widely spread empire. Vultures are probably only native to a few countries.

The vulture problem in Wellington gets complicated. Someone leaves large dumpsters open in the lot behind the store. It is the same lot all drive-through customers pass on the way to the order and pick-up areas. The dumpsters are not owned by Starbucks (probably). Wellington may have an ordinance which protects the birds. Commerce takes a back seat to preservation.

Likely, all Starbucks locations are next to some residential or commercial areas the company cannot control. Starbucks has free bathrooms at many locations. People can come and sit in Starbucks locations for hours, and may not even buy anything, even coffee. It’s easy to make a case for throwing people out, but that’s complicated as well. Are they customers, or not? Do they really need to use the bathroom? That leads, in turn, to the issue of bathroom cleanliness.

Starbucks is the victim of its own success, just like other companies which have thousands of locations. Someone has to keep an eye on customer service, and someone else on customer satisfaction, and someone else looks out for vultures, mice, in-store cleanings, cleaning on the sidewalks outside, employee efficiency.

And some on those vultures are in the parking lots.