Name: Why Starbucks Sucks Now
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T09:28:13.000Z
Duration: 12 min 56 s
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The crisp air, the falling leaves, the shockingly expensive seasonal drinks.

Starbucks now charges a dollar extra for Matcha and an extra 80 cents of flavored syrup, so you've really gotta savor every sip.

But hey, they have to make up for plummeting sales somehow, right?

It's safe to say customers are fed up with Starbucks.

A Starbucks drink the size of my pinky toe being $7.

You go and you pay $7 for a coffee and sit down in a crowded area, and

then you have to wait like 45 minutes for it.

The wait was forever no matter how you ordered.

Count your motherfucking days, Starbucks.

And behind the counter, Starbucks workers are just as frustrated with the company, its prices, the condition of its stores, and

Starbucks calls its employees partners, which is intended to really call them in and make them feel like family and like they're part of the business.

The workers really stopped feeling like partners.

Their changes that they made recently have definitely made it worse.

You're not supposed to have more than 10 drinks that haven't been served to customers in the time that they're ordered.

It wasn't that long ago that Starbucks was beloved as the progressive, socially conscious corporation.

Now it's facing boycotts, strikes, and longtime customers calling it a ripoff.

Here's how corporate greed backfired and took down an iconic company.

And how workers, not an ultra rich CEO, can save it.

Starbucks was kind of the king of the world.

It also had such a dominant place in the culture.

I spent a decaf percent latte with a long straw.

And it was just this phenomenon in which everybody, you know, I think especially young women, felt like they needed to be at Starbucks because that was the cool thing to do.

Starbucks was really in its heyday during the late 90s, early 2000s.

That's when it was really like the third place for people to relax and enjoy really good coffee.

Starbucks experienced explosive growth during the early 2000s, expanding from 3,500 stores in 2000 to 15,000 locations by 2007.

Then the financial crisis hit in 2008, and I think that's when things really started to change.

Because while in the past it had really been focused on the baristas and the consumers, with the financial crisis, suddenly the focus was on the shareholders.

Out of the recession, Starbucks had new priorities.

The company introduced mobile prepayments in 2014.

And by 2016, 40% of Starbucks locations included a drive thru.

In 2021, the company declared that pickup only stores were the future.

There were some controversies involving people who got kicked out of stores for lingering too long, people who had the police called because they were trying to use the restroom.

And that was kind of the beginning of a era in which Starbucks was a little bit more hostile to the customer.

They wanted to get you in, serve you your drink, and get you out of there.

There are now 41,000 Starbucks locations worldwide.

But with all the focus on maximizing sales, the actual product they were selling began to suffer.

I swear to God, I bit into it and it like squeaked.

Your food portions over the years have gotten noticeably and significantly smaller.

Maybe like right here with ice is the only drink in the whole entire thing.

The chaos unleashed by the new model created unprecedented demands on the staff, longer wait times, and

I think customers have really begun to notice that their stores feel different than they did along, you know, when they first started going to Starbucks.

Maybe there's one or two baristas in the entire store who are cranking out, you know, hundreds of orders every morning.

I think they see that their stores are maybe a little less well maintained.

The stress only got worse during the pandemic.

So workers began to unionize store by store.

In response, Starbucks started a CEO carousel, declared war on the union, and

There's been so many like Band Aid fixes over the past few years.

It seems like many times a year they roll out like a new system that's supposed to address all of our problems.

So it'll be like a system for dispensing ice or milk or whatever and then they roll it back because they realize it's stupid.

The company cycled through CEOs and comeback plans, including high tech latte machines that failed to make splash in the kitchen.

And Schultz conceived olive oil drinks that made too much of a splash in the bathroom.

It doesn't just cause stomach problems, but some serious diarrhea can ensue.

Up to that point, Starbucks relationships with its workers stunk too.

And we have to demonstrate to our people they can trust us and we have to show up.

Could you ever see and embracing the union as part of it?

No Starbucks workers say the company is intentionally spying on their union gatherings.

We have had a total of 10 union baristas fired in our area.

There is always more because Starbucks just won't stop.

And negotiation sessions were superficial at best.

What we've seen from the Starbucks representatives who have come to the table is indignant rage at the mere suggestion that somebody else would have any say in how even the most minor thing is done at the company.

I think that the company is absolutely delaying, trying to make this take as long as possible.

So partners are fed up and say, you know, I'm over it or, you know, move on.

They just backed out of our bargaining process altogether.

So the union fought back with countless strikes and workplace actions.

I don't think people thought that Starbucks was going to be like, yes, this is a worker owned co op now.

But I don't think they expected the company to fight tooth and nail, you know, at least in the beginning, for every advance that these workers wanted.

And then in late February 2024, this happened.

The coffee giant and the union, Workers United have agreed to begin talks aimed at improving labor relations and resolving lawsuits between them.

Workers on the union's uniquely large bargaining committee say things were looking positive.

We have a lot of amazing, tentative agreements, a lot more job security, democratic ways of participating and actually having a say in the operations, ways of enforcing the contract, holding the company accountable to it.

But by the summer of 2024, Starbucks stock price had fallen 15%.

And that fall, sales plummeted by 10%, thanks to boycotts, inflation, and bad PR.

If I'm scrolling TikTok and I see someone talking about some Starbucks drink, I will almost inevitably see a comment that says, bestie, we don't go to Starbucks anymore.

Instead of negotiating over the last phase of the contract the pay and benefits for more than 10,000 workers, Starbucks took all that cash and threw it at one guy, handing a $96 million check to the former CEO of Taco Bell and Chipotle.

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